


Lilou

by vehlek



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types
Genre: Angst and Feels, Blow Job, Character(s) of Color, Cunnilingus, F/M, First Time, Fluff, Fluff and Smut, Gentle Sex, Human/Pokemon Relationship(s), Kissing, Masturbation, Masturbation in Shower, Pining, Pokephilia, Pokémon are sentient, Porn Watching, Romance, but they can't talk, walrein - Freeform, whimsicott
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-01
Updated: 2019-05-06
Packaged: 2020-02-15 17:15:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 27,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18674026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vehlek/pseuds/vehlek
Summary: A nervous, lonely Braixen wants a relationship with her human neighbor. But a pokemon and a human, like that... that's weird. That's just how people think. It's terrifying, trying it anyway.





	1. Day One, or Just One Day

Vivienne rings the doorbell, being the right height for it. Lilou waits beside her, below her, mostly getting to look up and watch her human operate at a level designed for her, watching her pay as little attention to poking her finger onto the button of the doorbell as she does to the buttons of her phone while checking her messages.

Vivienne’s that manicured, ponytailed, suntanned white lady smiling for no reason, or because there’s no reason for her not to, _so proud_ of her little Lilou for just the same reason. Lilou’s the Braixen of this little party. The one who, rather than brushing her own tufts or filing her own nails, gets groomed. Who prefers the lack of a smile to the lack of a reason for it. The one whose day gets decided for her, and better look goddamn good enough right now for her lack of personal effort.

A few seconds of footfalls from inside and Nicolas opens the door, the simplest action that bring Lilou’s paws clutching at each other as she keeps staring up. Nicolas, the boy next door with the eyes impervious to some exact shade of brown or green that keep Lilou’s on them, with the cool brown skin so inviting on this hot early autumn’s day. He smiles only when he sees his visitors, steps aside for them with a backward nod, and says, “Yo, come on in.”

“Nicolas, thank you _so much_ again for watching Lilou,” Vivienne says, pressing her phone back into her purse and guiding Lilou by the shoulder into Nicolas’s apartment. “She got so antsy when I told her I had to work today—I couldn’t just leave her by herself at home again. You’ll have an easy time with her, don’t worry. She’s _so_ smart. Whatever you’re doing, she’ll try to help you. She’s such a sweetheart.”

Nicolas shuffles one hand into his pocket and sweeps the other over his hair—he straightened it this week. He’s kept it black again, but now it’s tied into a little bun at the top of his head like the half-naked buff men in television commercials.

Lilou averts her gaze.

“Yeah, she’s cool,” Nicolas says. “We’ll be fine. You getting to work now?”

Even as she brushes through her purse, Vivienne says, “Oh, yes. Yeah. We already had breakfast, so she won’t be hungry, but she’s not picky, anyway. She can eat when you eat.”

She pulls out a plastic baggy stuffed with kibble.

“Here’s her food, just enough for lunch, and I’ll be back for her before dinner. She eats just those three times a day, so keep an eye on your fridge—I put a lock on mine so she couldn’t root around for snacks while I’m not there. No good for her diet.”

Neither are those pellets of stale earthen garbage Lilou’s fed anyway. But Nicolas takes the baggy, swivels to his kitchen, and tosses it over to the counter in one smooth motion.

“Yup. Gotcha. What next?”

“Well, you’ve met each other before, so I know you’ll be great,” Vivienne says. “Just give her the remote to the T.V. and—you know how much she likes it. And just call me if there are any problems, right? I don’t think you’ll have any, but I’ll keep my phone on me, so don’t hesitate.”

Nicolas offers a thumbs-up. “No hesitating, gotcha.”

Vivienne swings open her purse again and glances at her phone. “All right, all right, I need to be going. You two have fun, right? And be good for Nicolas, Lilou. I’ll be back tonight, okay? Be good!”

She takes the handle, shuts the door behind her, and leaves a sudden silence in Nicolas’s apartment. A silence too long. Lilou tucks her paws behind the frills of her skirt of fur, fingers poking between the tufts in reach, words hiding under her tongue if only she could speak them in English. It’s the first time she’s been totally alone with him—

And it’s going to be very quiet.

Nicolas pulls his hand out from his pocket and bends at the knees, sinking to half his height and perfectly level to Lilou’s. Without looking her back in the eye, he reaches one hand around her waist and draws a paw back with him, scrambling how much control she holds over her own face. He holds her entire paw in just three fingers, and Lilou lets him.

“Hey, that’s what I remember I seen,” he says, thumbing over her fingers. He lets her go, pushes up, and pokes that thumb back toward the living room. “You’re about to learn how to play Pokken. Come on.”

It’s such a dumb thing she feels, Lilou’s sure, but as soon as Nicolas turns from her she swings her paws up to her head and rustles the red fur out her ears poofier, smooths down the tufts over her cheeks. She shoves her skirt down and only then follows.

Nicolas isn’t just any boy next door—he actually lives right next to Lilou and Vivienne. Even though his apartment is the same layout, his unfamiliar furniture and pictures and paint only adds to the mystery of what could happen in here. In the hall, he keeps photographs of humans shorter than him with the same regular curly texture to his hair, the same comfortable skin, and an older kind of broad smile than his—and no one but family in any frame, to which Lilou finds the first reason to smile.

But against the reasons still not to, she doesn’t.

This is the world of pokemon. In this world, humans have a remarkable talent for ignoring signs of intelligence. Lilou knows it well. In this world, in her experience, humans don’t have relations of any sort with pokemon beyond doting or training.

Openly, at least. Lilou’s seen the kind of videos humans make in private that everybody decries in public. The kind she gets her paws on through Vivienne’s computer every weekday.

Lilou strolls closer into the living room, or the bulk of the apartment, and the furniture there comes down to a puffy blue sofa splayed parallel to the television. It’s a flatter scent all over the place than her own home, too, untouched by Vivienne’s cloying air fresheners or really anything else. As little as Lilou’s ever gotten to meet him, she’s never heard Nicolas be the one to invite anyone over like Vivienne enjoys.

Even then, Nicolas hardly notices as Lilou glances to him, then pulls herself up onto the cushion beside him, wriggles around, and pads deeper and proper into the seat. She smooths down her skirt again, toes and the shiny untrimmed fur between them poking into the air ahead of her. It’s an active effort for her to tug her feet flatter against the sofa just so they don’t rise off from it so much, but Nicolas sits in total comfort, something he exudes so easily that Lilou feels better just sitting beside him.

His television is already on. He taps a few buttons on his little controller, not so little out of his hands, perhaps, and leans closer to the screen. Lilou’s gaze wanders from the flashy screens he’s clicking through back to his shirt fluttering with him, a size too large over the sort of kind, gentle frame he’s got going for him. Sweatpants, too. Comfortable to any touch.

It’s not like she has some fetish for humans. (She doesn’t. She might.) Nicolas is just a very special kind of human; a special kind of person. He treats her like—maybe like he would anyone? He treats her like he does Vivienne, the times he comes over for Vivienne’s get-togethers.

_parks himself on the couch, throws an arm over the side where Lilou’s already sitting, points out all the actors he knows and what else they’ve done when only Lilou’s listening to him. he doesn’t even try to talk to the other guests. maybe it’s only the television he cares about. or maybe if nobody else were here he’d slip off his pants right now and offer_

“Hold this.”

Nicolas pokes another of his little wireless controllers over Lilou’s lap. He meets her eyes for the split second she focuses back on his, then he sets the controller down and pulls away while her paws meet just the hard, smooth plastic.

It is pretty big, actually.

With the first controller in his own grip, Nicolas points his finger over Lilou’s to a stick extruding from a sort of bump in the plastic. He says, “That moves you. You know how to use remotes? This is like that. The A button is your yes clicker. Try picking your character.”

It’s all too easy for Lilou to dart her gaze down to only the controller. Nicolas can hold his with ease, but Lilou’s paws hardly fit around the sides of hers. With it sitting in her lap, at least, she works at configuring her fingers into a legible shape over the stick she’s been told to try, bumping it up and down with her thumb as the rest of her fingers steady her grip on the side.

Anyone else may already know how to use one of these, but Lilou, thank you very much, really needs the instructions to keep her mind occupied right now.

“Nah, you got to look up at the screen while you move it,” Nicolas says. He points up at the television, and Lilou follows his finger to a screen filled with pokemon in dolled-up expressions, posing for battle like that’s all they’re good for.

Which in this case, they are. It’s a fighting game. Lilou holds her controller steady and presses her plastic stick in the direction of a Braixen’s portrait, contoured and brushed like some ideal if not plasticked model for her whole species.

Mostly appropriate, Lilou wishes.

“Okay, okay, now,” Nicolas says, pointing back to the buttons on Lilou’s controller, “ _voici quelques charabia complet sur tout un tas de choses chacun de ces badges peut faire, oh bon, ce qui est lui même plus dire_ —”

Yes, that’s about what Lilou hears. She spreads a thin smile across her whole jaw and nods slowly every time Nicolas glances back up to her, at every little point he makes.

Then he points to the top of her controller and says, “And you’ll, uh—oh, shit. We’ll skip the shoulder buttons.”

Lilou bends an inch forward for a look at the buttons he’s pointed out, two pads just out of reach from Lilou’s fingers. Her paws are already dedicated in place over just the few buttons Nicolas already described.

“Yeah, we’ll both just skip those, fair play,” he says. “Here we go. I’m getting us in.”

Nicolas clicks and stick-waggles them into battle. His eyes keep sealed to the television now, not darting from one part to another but soaking in the whole screen at once. It’s not just the obvious of how he’s done this before—there’s a programming in his fingers to every motion he commands, tuning out Lilou completely for the television if not for a wide-eyed grin across his lips that she wonders how often he flashes playing by himself.

_with himself, but he doesn’t have to anymore_

Lilou presses her own buttons idly while Nicolas whacks his. His shoulders jut from side to side the same direction he moves his Machamp, a choice of fighter Lilou might appreciate if she paid it much attention.

Is this how Nicolas spends his nights? He works weekdays the same as Vivienne, and if he never invites anyone over, has he spent his time doing this or playing other games alone? Then it would definitely be Lilou’s company that’s got him enjoying himself so much. By narrowing down that logic, he’s basically smiling at her while he plays like the way she’s—

“Bam, flawless!” Nicolas declares, dropping his controller and thumping his fists in the air. The truest flash of pride creases his eyelids like dimples surrounding them, filling his cheeks and rattling the loose strands of his hair in that one instantaneous look of the autumn sun in his face. He settles down the next moment, but still smiling, he looks back down to Lilou’s _oh god she can’t just watch him the whole time like that what will he even think_ and says, “That was not a good round. That was bad. You got to try at least, y’know? We got one more round, come on. Eyes on your girl.”

Lilou hushes her frazzled gaze back to the screen. It doesn’t even show her defeated digital form anymore.

“Tell you what, just button mash,” Nicolas says. “Just mash your buttons. It’s legit, I’m not kidding.”

He still wants a fight? Fine, they’ll fight. Lilou crouches her paws tighter over her controller. She may not know how to do these spectacular fighting moves, but her avatar does, so she’ll just trust that—

Oh she lost again.

Lilou shoves the controller off from her lap. There’s no reason for anyone to be so proud of winning that easily. She doesn’t pout, goddammit, but—her frown tells more of a story than she likes.

Nicolas sets his controller next to hers and scratches his head. He doesn’t sigh, but—it’s after a pause in his breath that he says, “Where’s your wand, anyway?”

Lilou eyes him back just a second before she folds her arms and nods toward the door.

“Vivi got it for you?”

Lilou nods.

Nicolas nods slower with her. “Sucks?”

Lilou takes one more second to nod this time.

“Sucks,” Nicolas says, pushing himself back up in his seat. “She don’t trust you much, huh?”

He phrases it so simply. Maybe it’s easy for a fully fledged person to see it like that, but for just a pet—

Well, Lilou didn’t picture spending her one day with him on losing a video game about professional fighting pokemon who already know how to use their wands and special moves.

Nicolas takes up his controller again, but shuffles beyond just that motion beside Lilou. He wrestles one arm behind his back, slides his controller into the center of his lap, and stretches his free hand over the whole thing.

“Wait—okay, no bullshit,” he chuckles, looking between Lilou and the television. “Now we on even ground. One more try? You get to pick my character, too.”

Lilou huffs a breath through her nose. She grabs her controller back into her lap and paws her stick up to Nicolas’s previous selection, the Machamp, taking a firm look back to him while she’s there.

Nicolas shrugs, that motion still free to him. He says, “Aight, fair rematch. Let’s do this.”

Now the fight throttles to something frisky, mean, fast. Lilou mashes all her buttons like Nicolas was, jabbing her stick left and right and throwing fireballs, _yes_ , finally, swinging her wand all around and jabbing her stick again and dodging that grab the Machamp’s lunging for—?

“ _Nuh_ -ho!” Nicolas laughs, wrangling his stick around with just his thumb. “Fuck, fuck, come here! Gonna get you, come here, fuck! No, no, no you don’t—!”

Lilou grins close over her controller, leaning in for all these buttons she’s mashing. It shouldn’t be nice to fight someone at such a handicap, but goddamn does she enjoy seeing her Braixen’s fireballs _pop_ in those little explosions on somebody.

And seeing her swing her hips so wide in every idle move, tip her toes up every swing of her wand, flaunt every angle with that look on her face like she knows she can win whatever she tries.

Getting Nicolas to see those, too, is nice.

“Got you!” Nicolas cries, grappling digital forms more violently than in Lilou’s fantasies. “Alley-oop— _oomph_ , yeah. Come on, one more—shit! No, get back here!”

In the glances Lilou still gives herself, there’s a light again behind the lines on Nicolas’s face. The dimples by his eyes shine open and clear even through the squint that comes with his grin. It’s so easy for her to help him have this kind of fun.

But the action on screen climaxes with a jump, after Lilou finds the consistent button for it, and _many fireballs_ —Machamp takes the shots square in his chest and falls like a roided pile of bricks, the screen flashing big to Braixen’s win, dancing through her victory pose as Lilou drops her controller, throws her paws into the air just like—

“ _Oh_ , fuck, crushed me! Total reversal!” Nicolas bellows, throwing up just the one fist beside the victor this time.

“ _Nyu, bya_ —!”

Lilou shuts her damn mouth a second too late. Nicolas looks down to her nearly bemused, not that he can see the sudden sweat under the fur of her brow.

“Wow,” he says. “I never even heard you make a sound before.”

Lilou keeps her eyes on the screen instead, trying to hide both her frown and the only actual voice in her throat.

_oh my god, so cute, you’re such a little sweetheart, yes you are, can you say that for me again? you’re so precious, just listen to you, oh my goodness_

She smooths back the yellow tufts over her cheeks and pats a paw to her ears out of habit as she collects herself. Lilou just doesn’t like to sound like that.

Nicolas rouses her, bumping an easy fist over her shoulder before he settles it over his controller again. “Round two? Come on.”

Lilou takes a moment to process, then bumps him back. More of a tap on his forearm, really, but she grins for it.

Nicolas just laughs. He looks from her to her paw and says, “You trying not to hurt me? That’s real sad. You’re not gonna hurt me.”

 _Pap_. That’s the sound this time of Lilou’s miniature fist slapping against his bare skin— _it is cool_ —real effort involved, gritting her fangs and everything. Nicolas rolls over the armrest on his side of the sofa, still laughing through the fake pain in his voice as he says, “Oh, yeah, that’s it! Bring that on in for round two now, let’s go. I’ll pound your ass this time.”

Lilou shoots her gaze back to the television before he gets a clear look at her for that one, pawing her plastic tight. Nicolas just stretches his hand back over his controller, chuckling before he settles in for real, for serious.

No more squealing, no vocal accidents. Lilou doesn’t notice paying closer attention to her opponent on screen this time, but not in any way to help herself, and she loses the next round. Wins the one after. Celebrates quieter, knocks her toes together, appreciates Nicolas’s next conceding fistbump more than her victory.

It’s soon an hour later, or two, or whenever—there’s no clock on the wall, so Lilou only notices the window’s afternoon light when Nicolas pulls his arm out from around his back and stretches deep over the sofa, sighing, “Good fight. Good fight. Oh, damn—should have stretched sooner. You good for lunch now?”

He leads them both toward his kitchen, the tiniest room in his apartment that Lilou’s seen thus far. A bar counter opens it up toward the living room in lieu of any proper dining room, bare counter space doubling for his table.

Lilou scoops herself up onto one of the stools from the living room side as Nicolas shuffles over linoleum and takes the bag of kibble Vivienne left in his care. He lifts it between himself and Lilou, folding his brow as he says, “This really what you want?”

Lilou offers her firmest thumbs-down.

“Yeah…” Nicolas mutters, strolling quicker to the garbage bin. He taps it open with a foot, dunks the bag in, and lets the lid slap shut with a bang and a “ _Boop_.”

He opens the fridge next, Lilou peeking around him what little she can, but Nicolas shuts it before she sees any more than just a couple of cartons of something inside. He turns back to her, splays his hands together behind his head, and says, “New idea: let’s go to the store.”

It’s not often that Lilou gets to walk with anyone while the sun’s still high. She takes Vivienne’s spare key sometimes and goes for a stroll while her human’s at work, but with the looks she gets from strangers wondering why she’s by herself, it’s usually not much better than just masturbating alone in front of the computer.

So Nicolas locks his door while Lilou skips down the stairs ahead of him. Their apartment block lies near the center of the metropolis, accessible to everywhere nice to go for a walk. A few towers top the skyline from any direction, but in the tight little residential areas of the city, these neighborhoods, are mostly colorful stores, hand-painted street addresses, and thin, busy roads surrounding people’s happy homes.

Lilou smooths down her skirt on the sidewalk, holding up for Nicolas as he hops down every other step behind her. She slips her paws behind herself again and watches him smile his way down to her as he flips apart the rims of blue plastic sunglasses, donning them for the hot sun beating down on them together.

Lilou’s never gone to the supermarket herself, but even though Nicolas leads them, she wanders beside him down the sidewalk. No strangers even glance at her today, as if only Nicolas knows she’s there. It makes for kind of a giddy feeling in her toes, like they want to bounce.

She lifts just one paw over, tugging—not too hard, just gently enough—at Nicolas’s sweatpants, pulling his shaded gaze down to her. She points to him, then motions a paw to her mouth, bobbing both her lips and fingers open and closed.

“Talk about what?” Nicolas says, hands in his pockets. “You want me to talk, you got to come up with something.”

Lilou hesitates in the moment she thinks of how to phrase it. She grips something roundish and invisible with just two fingers, settles it over her eyes, and hunches over something flat as all her fingers type on it.

Without getting to see his dimples in the expression, Nicolas just smirks at her. He says, “Oh, wow, what is that? Just nerding out? You want to talk computers?”

Lilou shakes her head. Nicolas rolls his head back a second as he grunts his understanding, saying, “Oh, you mean work?”

Lilou nods!

“Yeah, work’s good. But that’s nothing to talk about,” Nicolas says. He puckers and shrugs wide. “I just try to forget about it soon as I’m home, y’know? Not many people blessed with getting to love their job.”

Really, she does know.

“Nah, work’s fine. Forget about that. What do you do every day, Lilou?”

It’s like Nicolas stares her down now. Not just making conversation, but waiting to learn about her. Lilou’s tongue fumbles in her mouth, nearly wanting to give some kind of real answer, but the look she can only see half of makes her wonder if Nicolas really expects her to just—say something.

Like he wouldn’t be surprised if human words rolled off her tongue right now, if she could use those to act like something else.

She just taps her fingers midair over something flat again.

“Hell yeah,” Nicolas says. “That makes two of us. What else, right?”

No, actually, nothing else. Get woken up, get fed, get brushed, get to wave goodbye a few seconds before eight or nine hours of pacing and digital surfing. Masturbation isn’t even an embarrassing punchline anymore.

But Lilou shrugs a smile back up before Nicolas looks forward again.

“On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a Braixen,” he chuckles. “Just kidding. I’m just messing with you.”

They wait for the whole road to pause for them as a signpost past the crosswalk flashes white for pedestrians, and they jog for it despite their plenty of time. Just past that intersection is the largest parking lot for miles stretched before the supermarket, cars and buggies rolling beside each other down every aisle, jockeying for space.

Nicolas whistles as they go, strolling past the hot tires and cooling engines a pace ahead of Lilou now. He looks back to her a second and says, “Busy. Want a shoulder back ride?”

_good little pokemon playing with her trainer, no one looking twice, a man and his braixen having fun in the right kind of way, maybe just kindly old folks smiling at them as they pass by_

Lilou clutches her fingers tight around each other behind her back, but to Nicolas, she just shrugs half of a nod.

Her next view is sudden and _broad_ , wow, just look at it all. It’s a horrible view, actually, just the roasting tops of a sterile fleet and untidied haircuts walking quickly back to their place within it, but Lilou can see it all at once now and god it’s _huge_.

Nicolas holds her ankles just barely, hunching an inch more forward for her, her paws resting careful around his black bun. If her fur is too much of a thick coat over his own skin, he doesn’t mention it. He just hops her whole body steadier once or twice, grunting or giggling, and guides the both of them toward the big sliding doors at the side of the store.

And while he’s having fun, Lilou notices all the people staring at her after all. Necks craning, taking time out of their day to get a better look at the pokemon maybe a little too big for shoulder rides anymore.

Then she notices the sign by the entrance.

She wiggles her feet in his grasp, tapping beside his shoulder with her paw. Nicolas twists his neck up toward her, not asking what, but looking next to where she points.

 

NO POKEMON INSIDE PLEASE - THANK YOU!

 

There’s two unoccupied benches beneath the sign. The ‘please’ is what really completes it—the message is entirely for humans, not Lilou.

She lets most of her grip on Nicolas sink. He pauses them beside the door, only stepping out from the way of buggies and busybodies, and clicks his tongue at the sign. He hops Lilou once more into a better grip.

“No reason for that,” he says. “Guess it’s the minimart now.”

He swoops them back around toward the street again, but Lilou taps him on the shoulder with just the thought of how glad she is nobody can see the real color in her cheeks. She wiggles her feet, points to the ground, and looks away when Nicolas gets a look at her face.

“Yeah, okay,” he says, helping her down. “No problem.”

She walks behind him again down the road, smoothing her skirt repeatedly every time she looks at the strangers passing by as they miss her. Nicolas doesn’t bring anything up with her for this walk.

A gas station lies on the corner a few blocks away, a modern brick storefront pretending to be classical laid out in front of at least a little grove of trees and hedges, big potted flowers stumped between each of the pumps. Nicolas heads in first through the smaller door there that he pulls open himself, but stretches back to keep open for Lilou. It’s with one more personal pat down that she scurries in with him.

The middle aisle holds the snacks with all the bright labels and big fonts, the candy bars stocked at child-luring height. Nicolas looks to the other side of the aisle with the mini cereals and energy bars, but Lilou pokes her fingers all across the red and blue packages nearly designed just for her sparkling eyes.

“Y’know, it’s just a shame because—I was really gonna cook us up something awesome,” Nicolas says, eyeing Lilou over his shoulder. She glances back up to him, and he continues, “Oh, yeah. Had it all planned out. We were gonna get some seasoning, some, like—meat, too, and vegetables. I was gonna treat you to my world famous—”

He pauses rather than letting his tongue stumble over empty air. He rolls his eyes back a second, shakes his hands in his pockets, thinks a moment.

“Good lunch. World famous good lunch.”

He nods slow and steady, sure of his words now.

“Yeah. That’s what’s a shame, because I was gonna show you how I eat all the time, just real awesome, and now we’ve got to settle for the alternate food groups.”

Nicolas glances between her and the candy bars. Lilou glances between him and the candy bars. Her ears curl lower as she fails to grin.

“Chocolate’s poisonous to you, huh?”

Lilou glances between him and the candy bars, then nods.

Nicolas nods, too, pursing his lips. “Alternate-alternate food groups. Okay.”

They carry out at least two bags each as they exit the mart, flimsy plastic filled with low-fat yogurt bars, more or less ten boxes of single-serve cereals, and _juice_ , motherfucker. With an appropriately reduced sugar content. Still good.

The bags serve as trash bins beside the sofa back home as Lilou and Nicolas both sag against the rear cushions, knees shoved out and necks bent at nearly the same angle while the television assaults their attention together. Some flick made for the silver screen. Not bad. Not good. Nice, Lilou thinks.

Nicolas holds a bowl in one hand and a spoon in the other, elbow dumped over his armrest, chewing sweetened wheat flakes at the same speed his senses drain away. Lilou munches on another of the bars, lapping at the strawberry filling whenever a string of it dangles from her previous bite. Though she’s more slumped than he, Lilou still takes a peek at Nicolas every time the television gets a laugh from him. His face rests easy the rest of the time, contorting only for his spoon, but when he chuckles, she likes watching his eyes dance from brown to green and all in between more than whatever produces his chuckle.

He glances back to her. She glances back to the television. No talking now.

Lilou still looks to him—she keeps her head forward, but her gaze peeks to the slightly flattened form still in the corner of her eye. His sweatpants. The half an outline of his shaft laid asleep in them.

_favorite video. shaky camcorder in the hand of someone only paying half his attention to holding it steady, shot framing a Manectric in the throes of exactly what she wants. knees buckled, hind legs barely upright, ass slamming over that smooth pink thing, no barbs, no bulb, just the comfort. she looks back to the camera with those eyes Lilou can’t even practice in the mirror. the language on her tongue is the joy in her soaked_

Nicolas laughs again. Lilou still takes a quick peek at him for it.

The videos, though. She doesn’t like many of those videos, no matter how many she watches. Sometimes they’re reminders of worse things. Not all the partners in those illicit films look satisfied, happy, or either. And none of the videos, not a one, ever show the human’s face.

But she doesn’t need them to when she can just keep glancing to her left.

Nicolas sets his spoon back in his bowl and pushes himself up, stretching his neck either way and groaning for a second before he takes the remote in his other hand. He looks directly to Lilou next, and she shoves the rest of her yogurt bar in her gullet for the moment’s hesitation it takes to realize he’s paying attention. He rattles the remote.

“Cartoons now?”

Lilou blinks over her stuffed cheeks, then shrugs.

“Cool,” Nicolas says, clicking over channels and setting the remote down by Lilou. He puts his bowl on the carpet by his feet, then shoves off and skips toward another room hissing, “Taking a leak.”

_bit much, but maybe she’ll learn to like it if that’s what he’s into_

Actually no. Scratch that one.

Lilou gulps down her actual mouthful and slips her empty wrapper into the bag flapped open under her feet, then slumps back fully into the cushions. She needs to stop. She’s done enough actual research to know porn is a bad place to learn about relationships, but even outside of that, she’s seen that it’s guys who normally make the first move. That if they don’t show any interest, then they really aren’t interested.

She knows having to spend time with someone else is no interest shown.

But she also knows you have to show that you’re interested first, sometimes.

_god yes do that_

She slaps her paws over her cheeks, flattening her puffy tufts before her fingers drag down and release them. How does she expect Nicolas would even react? What could even happen if things progressed? They have no more time to spend together after today. Under the best circumstances, they have no relationship.

She needs to stop.

“Back in action,” Nicolas calls behind her, strolling around the sofa the moment after and thumping back into his spot. Lilou’s seat bumps next to his as he wriggles further, taking the remote again and really settling in. Lilou just smiles up at him, a plain welcome back, at least.

And Nicolas smiles back just as easy, then rolls his arm over the cushion on Lilou’s side. Just like when he comes over to Vivienne’s, sure, but—

_different different different different_

Lilou straightens herself up a bit, pulls her legs closer together until her toes are bouncing cold against each other. Her paws meet tight over her lap. She’s going to do it. Her cheeks flare under the skin, her gaze swerves anywhere but to her left, and she tilts her stiff spine the same direction she won’t look.

And she touches down against the ribs of his shirt. Her ear and fur nestle around it. She forces herself to keep breathing at the same rate.

Nicolas shifts above her, chest twisting an inch under her cheek, but then he shifts back without a word. Lilou can’t see what expression he makes, but she feels the same gentle pulses in him cushioning her face. There’s no disturbance in his heart like in hers. It’s a bad sign, maybe, but this one she likes anyway.

Inordinate time passes them by, as it feels. The window at the far end of the room keeps getting dimmer now as the sun gives up on Lilou and Nicolas, fading lower every time Lilou looks its direction.

The television offers them only the smallest kind of time together after all. Lilou stays against Nicolas as long as she can, until the whole apartment dims in the glow of just the screen, but it feels like a countdown until the moment their cushions press apart again and he rises, stretches his back, leans down for his bowl and all their trash.

Lilou turns over the back of the sofa as Nicolas treads to the sink, clatters his dishes, throws away the plastic. She stays put and wonders if she needs to get up right this second, follow him.

“Vivi’s back at what, seven?” Nicolas calls to her, swiveling the faucet over the dishes for a few seconds’ rinsing. “She’s always back before me, anyway.”

He looks to the window.

“Damn. Time’s really gone.”

Lilou sits herself back down and straightens all the fur within reach of her maddened paws. She presses down her skirt like three times before a warmer light clicks on overhead, footfalls then shuffling closer. Nicolas sits by her again, and Lilou sits all too still. The television’s still on. That’s what he keeps watching, stretching his hands only behind his head now.

Does he recognize any of the actors lending their voices? He hasn’t said. Maybe he doesn’t really watch cartoons, thinks they’re just more suitable for Lilou’s type.

Maybe Lilou plays the supporting role in this apartment, too.

_touch him again, find out_

It’s all she wants to find out. It’s nothing she dares to try. It’s the poems dancing in circles in her head about love and lust and risk and how to tell which of them is real, how to look into his eyes and see the kinds of thoughts in them she believes only she could have. Discovery. Thoughts contorting into touch. Mutual everything shared all at once.

_or sit here and do nothing and let him let you leave for nothing, no touch, no knowing_

Sweat bubbles around Lilou’s brain. Her fingers pry cold and still at each other. She needs another hour or two to figure out what she should be doing here. Maybe a week.

But then Nicolas giggles freely again at the television.

Lilou looks straight to him, maybe forgetting to hide her gaze, maybe ignoring the fear telling her to. She watches every line in his smile curl for the moment she can see them, one cheek flickering between shadows and flashes of color from the screen, the other shaded cool under the light on and in him. He’s happy—but by himself, or beside Lilou?

The doorbell rings and all the clocks in the world come to an end. Nicolas looks over his shoulder, lowers his hands to push himself off the sofa, and one thought rocks into Lilou’s mind clearer than all the rest, quiet and profound for just the instant: it’s safest to let this day end in peace. Quietly.

So in her quietest note, Lilou mutters, “ _Byan_?”

Nicolas waits, looks down as the vestige of his smile is lit anew at her, and he says so easily, “What’s that?”

Emerald waves crash against dark cliffs and swirl together in a horizon that Lilou drifts into all at once before closing her own eyes. Her paws dangle over his chest and she feels her fingers curl around his shirt. She presses her lips over the warmest skin of her life, and it lasts.

It’s flat. Their mouths are both closed, lips chapped. It’s a kiss totally unprepared. It’s the touch alone, the invitation for more, that lasts as long as Lilou can pretend it does.

Lilou pulls away by herself. She flutters her eyes back open, knees pressed beside his leg, raised up beside Nicolas to nearly his own height, cold and scared everywhere but for the warmth still fading on her lips.

She sees a smile faded even quicker.

The look on Nicolas’s face matches the exact confusion of a man who can’t understand any pokemon wanting to be more than a pet. The swirl in his eyes moves backward and his hands draw away.

“I don’t—”

He keeps looking her in the eye like he needs an explanation, like he’s waiting for her silly excuse about how this was all a big misunderstanding. And Lilou can’t look away.

“—I didn’t know.”

The doorbell rings. Nicolas ducks out of Lilou’s gaze, turns over his shoulder again, fiddles an empty thumb back toward the door. Lilou struggles her paws back into place around herself, not him, and she nods quick, slides her legs away, tugs herself off the sofa as Nicolas pushes off to go welcome Vivienne back.

“Hey, Nicolas! How was she? Did you two have fun together? Oh, there she is, hey, Lilou! Were you good for Nicolas? She can be such a handful, right, she’s such a smart girl but too much for her own good sometimes, isn’t she. Didn’t feed her anything too _human_ , did you? don’t want her to get _the wrong idea_ or something, get _too big for her britches, get even dumber than what stupid ideas she already comes_

“Yeah, uh, sorry if you waited. Had the T.V. up,” Nicolas says, stuffing his hands in his pockets and stepping back from the door. “She was—yeah. We had a fun day.”

Vivienne peeks around him, pushing her purse back and leaning down over her knees, smiling big and pearly into the apartment. “Lilou, were you good for Nicolas?”

Two steps at a time and yet slower, Lilou gets herself past Nicolas and halts just in front of Vivienne. She nods once up at her human and stifles the rest.

“Good! Such a sweetheart,” Vivienne says with a ruffle over Lilou’s ears. She stands straight again and shores up her purse, offering her hand for Lilou’s paw as she says to her equal, “Thanks again for looking after her, Nicolas. She just spends so many days alone already, right? I just really appreciate you being able to—”

“Yeah, no, don’t mention it,” Nicolas says. He slips a hand up behind his neck, gaze flickering down a moment before he brings it back up to Vivienne. “I should—”

He looks back, pointing a thumb with it, tongue hanging on the excuse he needs. But Vivienne says, “Oh, yeah, I won’t keep you. You get back to your T.V. But thanks again, okay?”

“Yeah,” Nicolas stutters, eyes still unsteady. “Have a good night.”

Lilou follows Vivienne home for the five more seconds Nicolas has to bid something further.

_look back?_

No.

Vivienne shuts the door behind her and her girl after nothing else comes. She lays her purse over the counter, stretches her arms, sighs something about her _no one cares_ , and strolls toward the bedroom to change back into her lazy clothes. Her girl excuses herself straight to the bathroom.

Lilou’s pathetic. Tears bubbling over her cheeks, mind muddling over her mistake. Paws clutched hard over her mouth to muffle the sobs scrambling through, shaking, kneeling in front of the toilet like she wants to vomit out her lungs. There is a perfect image of her whole self floating before her eyes no matter how she wipes at them. It’s just sad. It’s the dumbest kind of sight.

The worst part is how quickly she shuts the hell up as soon as she hears the bedroom door knock open again. Her reddened eyes widen and her throat clamps shut. Her knees on the cold floor plead with herself that no one sees her like this, including herself, if she could just—

She counts down how long she can stay in here until Vivienne will come knock on the door, check on her. The rest of the night will go on dry-cheeked, big and smiling, some more television and dinner in a bowl. By the time she and Vivienne go to bed, Lilou won’t be able to cry anymore even if she tries, and as sad and alone as her scene is now, she feels better spilling her tears than letting them go to waste. They go to waste anyway.


	2. The Rest of the Goddamn Week

Wake up Monday morning feeling like wake up Monday morning feeling like wake up Monday morning feeling like _wake up Monday morning feeling like_ exactly that. Honorable mentions to Tuesday and the rest of the gang, but they’re just not the same as remembering she hasn’t even reached those.

Lilou, dried but bloated, a little empty, sodden, tugs the blanket up over the splayed tufts of her cheeks as she’s forced awake by herself. No matter how much she’d like to keep sleeping forever, the routine beckons her. Her closed eyes lie to her, and lying under the sheets does nothing.

And Vivienne keeps bumping the bed anyway hopping into her jeans, getting ready for work.

Lilou soon eats her breakfast a wasted minute at a time at the dining table, scooping her paw half full from the bowl Vivienne used to squeal at when Lilou ate directly from it. The fat of her butt is numb already because Vivienne’s chairs are those tiny woven kinds without any cushioning to them, scratchy when her fingers brush over them. They’re just meant to look pretty. Vivienne’s mattress is the only furniture in the whole apartment comfortable enough to stay long on it, and not even it works right.

“That makes… okay, yeah,” Vivienne says as she dainties her wrist and fastens her watch. “I’m all set to go, Lilou, so I’ll see you tonight, okay? I trust you not to gorge yourself on lunch. It’s in the cabinet again. Are you going to be good today?”

Lilou chews the next small bite of many and wanders her gaze in Vivienne’s general direction. She hasn’t faked a smile at this step for a long time.

“Oh, I know you will,” Vivienne says anyway. She flips her ponytail off her shoulder, slides up the strap of her purse, and checks her phone again before she might put it up for another five minutes. Scrolling with her thumb and reading at the same time, she says, “Okay… all right, I’m going, okay? Be good, sweetheart.”

Then it’s with a kissy noise and twirl in her ankles that she opens the door, slams, jingles, clicks. Lilou sits alone with a streak of sun shining clear on her face even as half the rest of the lights in the apartment still glare useless around her.

She turns off the light in the bathroom when she goes to shower. Her day really begins sitting at the bottom of the stall in darkness and solitude, knees wrapped in front of her face.

Vivienne’s spare key lies at the bottom of the drawer in her bedside table buried beneath old receipts and printouts from her work. With a towel still laid damp over her ears, Lilou shuffles for the key without disturbing the papers, or else slides those back into place from where they slip to. Towel goes in the hamper, Lilou goes out the door. She stretches her legs taut to reach the knob from the apartment stairwell, but she locks it and stuffs the key back in the yellow fluff of her tail. She ignores any other door. He’s not home anyway.

Rush hour has passed. Most of the cars parked parallel on the street are gone as Lilou steps onto the sidewalk, tucking her paws under her elbows. There’s still a cooler kink to the wind this early when it breezes by, but it can only disguise how bright the sun already burns over the city.

No one else is in sight down the road. Even without crossing the street, Lilou looks both ways to know for sure. She smooths down the heavier fur of her skirt, still damp on the inner fibers, and wipes her paws off against it as if they need the same drying. She bundles her paws into fists independent of each other and walks.

Curtains are already shunted open across windows all down the street. Shops, second-story homes, and smaller apartment blocks all bundle against each other in old colors painted fresh every other building. It’s just around her own block Lilou walks, but all the colors and welcome signs her gaze hangs upon decorate the other side of the street.

The rest of the neighborhood’s active folks finished their strolls earlier. The baby buggy walkers, the joggers, the hands-behind-their-backs-sauntering old couples. None of these types include other pokemon. Maybe a Petilil or a Pichu bouncing along the occasional buggy under strict parental supervision, maybe a Lopunny or squat little Pikachu jogging along with their trainer, maybe a Natu perched on some retired shoulder—but those aren’t the walkers or the joggers. They’re the accessories.

Lilou’s watched all of them before from the window.

She turns the corner by herself and avoids eyes with a couple on the other side of the street, two young black and white ladies holding hands like they’re touring someplace made for their leisure alone. Lilou darts her gaze farther away as she sees one of them look her up and down, then look to her partner, whispering.

Vivienne used to make Lilou wear a collar and tag with all her information, but that lasted about two days before she got sick of Lilou unbuckling it every other glance back. Now it’s times like these that make Lilou walk a little faster, run back home around the next corner.

Wasn’t that exciting? The first sudden reminder of the one good walk she can never recreate. Makes slumping in front of the door back inside the apartment a real heart-racer.

Makes for a good need to think somewhere else.

So Lilou lays the key in the bottom of the drawer and settles it hidden again. She pauses a few steps away by the desk in Vivienne’s bedroom, smooths her fingers slow and heavy down her skirt, then pulls herself up into the swivel chair. She lifts her fingers to the mouse and keyboard at the edge of the desk, then scrolls her way past the PDFs and work folder icons littering the computer’s desktop, clicking her way into the world wide web.

**WARNING - ARE YOU 18 OR OVER AND WILLING TO VIEW ADULT CONTENT?**

Lilou’s eyes are slim and her fingers slack as she clicks through to an amateur video hub starring whoever’s willing to share their struts with the rest of the community. A community built on blurred identifiers, cheap filming, private browsers, and pokemon partners. Most of them willing. Never mind that.

_never mind: exactly how much it matters to everyone else_

Never mind that. Today, Lilou pushes herself lower down her swivel chair and brushes apart just a tuft or two of her skirt. She’s already a little wet, but she’s not enjoying herself.

_favorite searches not in order, don’t tell anyone: ‘cock’ - ‘big’ - ‘hard’ - ‘dick’ - ‘braixen’ - ‘gentle’ - ‘suck’ - ‘piv’ - ‘lick’ - ‘love’ - ‘gentle’ - ‘love’ - ‘gentle’ - ‘gentle’ - ‘gentle’ - ‘rough’ - ‘hazel eyes’ - not that last one_

“The bigger The Better for Cotton puff,” reads the title of what Lilou clicks to. She pulls her wrist down from its perch at the edge of the desk.

Smartphone recording. Shaky view of a table and a chair and a Whimsicott sitting there, her and the chair facing away from the table, cotton plush squeezed around the slats of the back. Low breathing. Not the puff’s. A tiny smile on the Whimsicott’s face turning wider as the Cock comes into view over her.

Long, smooth, wet, lovely shade of near brown dripping little stretchy beads over the Whimsicott’s tongue—she licks it. Tongue sliding out her lips and wiping up and down a shaft too big to fit all the way—she loves it. The Cock, dipping into the balls of squishy cotton naturally collaring the puff, and the Whimsicott, wrapping her little arms around the glans and slurping quietly up the base.

Lilou’s fingers react already.

The Cock, batting around her face, dripping it wetter everywhere it delights her in its touch. Nuzzling against the green horns and the cotton bangs and stopping its journey only for a kiss. The Cock, smooth, smooth, stretching her lips painlessly when she takes an inch inside. The Whimsicott, taking as much as she likes but not too much, looking up at the camera and slurping for it, _sssuckkking slurping sliding_ , proving this one’s hers. Taking care of it fully. The Cock, breathing higher and lower in her mouth, pulsing smooth and slippery—

‘The Cock,’ because it’s better than ‘slight amount of pubic hair creeping into the bottom of the shot.’

Lilou notices. She peers over every inch. Her one finger inside tells her how _good_ it looks, and her thumb just outside agrees wholeheartedly.

The table. The Whimsicott climbing onto it, spreading herself, beaming up at the camera as it rattles two steps closer. The Cock clinging over her, tugged glans pushing up against her tiny pussy. A hand leaning in and joining around it, jacking the shaft back and forth as the puff holds herself breathless and stretched against the tip. Low breathing now heavy breathing.

A shaky rush in the hand—a moist weight over the Cock—a bewildered smile across the whole Whimsicott, taking a whole burst inside her, shivering, watching her prize shoot its wad tight in her belly before pulling up and lobbing an extra string or two up outside it, spilling the last seed over her face, around her lips, under her tongue lapping up that last bead, in her mouth at last with a smile for the viewer.

  * PLAY AGAIN?



Lilou frowns. She withdraws her finger. Should she have expected penetration? No, but it still leaves a hole in her imagination empty, too.

And a condom, like the face, was apparently never an option to begin with. No risk of pregnancy is about all it takes to junk the plastic and go raw dogging. Not that Lilou minds entirely, but she appreciate condoms too. Of course she does. She does. There are no transmitted diseases that affect both humans and any pokemon together, but articles on the Internet suggest some that humans and pokemon can act as carriers for between multiple partners, and Lilou’s… read some of those.

But it’s a continued swelling under Lilou’s deepest black fur that prompts her scrolling past the thumbnails of a Walrein, a Granbull, a whole display of different sizes and colors and positions in the latest videos—and nothing she clicks.

Lilou moves her dry paw from the mouse to the keyboard, shoving herself up and pecking out one letter at a time, spelling the name she knows the best in the search bar.

‘Braixen’ results: four hundred and seventy-six. Most of them by the same partners. None of them new. Lilou’s watched or avoided all of them.

She slumps again. She drifts her paw back to the mouse and scrapes it toward another website, a human smut center with calmer digital caution tape greeting her on the splash page. Here, it’s whole crews filming people get naked. It’s high definition, bright, accessible for nearly any fetish or style or just some little preference between the tens of thousands of videos sprawling across the lists of lists of lists of kinks.

And so it’s a woman on a man, not the Cock, but a man with a square jaw and a perfect shave and sweet lips but smiling plastic up at the kind of naked woman that men actually want. And her—she’s caressing her own silky black hair, bouncing under her own power with legs curved long, natural, even smoother than that dick she’s moaning at somewhat.

Lilou’s legs slump tighter. Her joints tense. She slips her finger back inside, straddles her thumb on top, tries to press her digit farther for every inch that fits inside that real woman.

And then his hands, real hands with skin and bone stretching soft over her hips, guiding her up and down and rubbing over her thighs, taking up all her skin around his. There’s only a glance of his cock with every quiet slapdown, but it’s all there, it’s inside, it’s thick and it’s fresh and it’s _hot_ in her oven—Lilou can feel it.

_‘I don’t—’_

A tattoo of rolling waves flexes over the man’s rich dark forearm as he moves, drawing his hands up to the woman’s breasts, and they are a plump perfect bright olive and framed luscious all at once. A forward arch echoes down her spine, dipping lower and descending fully a moment later until the man’s licking at the firmament of her breasts and her hair’s cascading down the other side of him.

Lilou twists her paw lower and nudges a second finger beside her first, squeezes herself tighter. She glides her thumb hard over her clitoris, she has one, too—but she wants the feeling _inside_. She has that silky black hair, too, just like the real woman’s, just as deserving, right? But hers is fur, and it runs in all different directions down her legs.

_‘—I didn’t know’_

Lilou shakes the chair with every other thrust, gritting her teeth and gripping the seat. He needs time to think. She overreacted. It’s right there in his words that _he hasn’t rejected her yet_.

“Ah, unh, _auwnh_ —!”

And as the video rings it out for her Lilou’s spine bucks rigid, her knees press taut, her eyes squeeze closed so she can see _him_ at least as electricity trembles through the vision in her mind—and it’s all over.

_‘Yeah, no, (please god) don’t mention it’_

Nicolas shot her down. Hard.

The breaths pant loose out Lilou’s throat in this horrid dawning afterglow, but they don’t feel like hers. Her legs hang loose all of the sudden off Vivienne’s chair. She opens her eyes, and not only is the video still playing but the sun is still rising bright through the bedroom window. The clock on the computer reads No, Not Even Noon Yet.

She hurries a paw in stretching up and clicking the perfect couple away, but it’s a pitiful motion just as suddenly. Lilou pulls down slower to her skirt, smooths it flat, and that feeling matches. It’s the kind of feeling of eight more hours of this whether she can take it or not.

 

 

Wednesday now, right? Lilou questions what she already knows just so her blurry mind has something to mull over while she stays in bed, awake despite the warm comforter she tugs higher over her muzzle, snuggles deeper under. She fakes the feeling that she can still drift back off, pretends a little longer.

And Vivienne dumps her own butt on the bed to put on her shoes, shaking both the mattress and Lilou and not apologizing but just humming like she’s ready for a good day.

It’s gotten cloudy out the window as Lilou scoops a crumby paw into her bowl from the table. Her eyes linger toward the glass and glaze over between store rooftops and that tall, puffy kind of cloud rising deep and rolling slow over them. It’s a series of thick puffs pressing together across all the sky she can see. Might be a wet day ahead.

“All right… and I guess that should be it,” Vivienne says, closing her purse up and scooping it over her shoulder. “I’m all ready to go, Lilou! You’ve got your lunch in the cabinet, television to keep you busy… are you going to be good while I’m gone?”

Lilou chews. Swallows. Takes another pawful of her breakfast. Then glances.

Vivienne’s already poked her phone out from her purse, tapping through her messages before she, too, glances up for just a second, smiling, saying, “I know you will. See you tonight, okay? Bye, sweetie!”

She slams the door behind her and clicks it locked. Lilou takes another bite from the half a bowl she has left to eat.

The light stays off in the bathroom while she’s in the middle of her shower. Back pressed against the wall under the spout, water not pouring down her fur but in front of it, muffling the sounds within it—arm reached firm over her stomach, bucking softly, two fingers held tight around each other. The darkness offers her imagination full control of the scene. The inconsistent splashing against tile and porcelain accompanies a moaning in just her head, a gasping she want to echo louder for the man pumping inside her, a full-throated kind of _god yes, please_ , as she’s lifted by the hips into his arms, into his chest, wraps her paws around his shoulders and clings onto him for those rising shocks deep beneath her stomach.

Two more fingers mount her clit, moving a little erratic over the scene timed in her head but _almost_ right, just close enough for the sounds she imagines as he nibbles down her ear, rutting her hard and fast but caressing her anyway as she leans in for him, begs his tongue closer around her skin—she keeps her eyes shut, lets it play out. Lets him hold tight, finish inside her, right there, _yes_ —!

Then Lilou opens her eyes. Even in the dark, she sees the real world again. Her ears feel heavy over her soggy cheeks.

Maybe next time.

So the rain begins. Lilou takes one glance from the television to out the window, watching the glass slip wetter as the drops patter a regular ambiance under the big clattering wheel and cheering contestants on screen. A warmer lamp glows overhead to help fill the apartment, but of all these lights it’s still the glowing screen that pulls back Lilou’s littlest attention.

She lies on her side, head propped up by her elbow and ankles crossed at the other end of the sofa, a sharp-angled toffee addition to Vivienne’s aesthetic more than any good piece of furniture. It’s not just skinny. It’s thin. Lilou knows, but she hardly notices it anymore. She flexes one leg high over the other, stretching it straight and up and down again with a sigh through her nostrils, and lets what she notices fade to a dull thrum in the front of her mind.

It’s the cheering. A man tromps up the stage from his podium pumping his fists in the air, waving to the studio audience and shaking the hand of a woman with a long skinny microphone smiling at him and everyone else at the same time. It’s the chance of a lifetime for big money, big money, and even when they don’t get the chance everyone loves seeing someone else get it.

The man this time has familiar wrinkles by his eyes when he smiles, that young kind from being really happy. The audience really roots for this guy, but his young wrinkles don’t make up for anything when he flunks two games of luck in a row. Boo. Loses. Then more cheering when someone else runs up the stage for their chance.

Lilou pulls her leg back down and scoots her fist a little higher up her cheek. Her other paw she lays ahead of herself, scrunching her fingers close and tapping them in rhythm over the sofa, muttering, “ _Nyew nyew, nyew nyew_.”

This other lady wins, then loses. She’s out. Boo. Someone else gets their chance.

Lilou dumps her face over the cushion beneath her and pushes both her paws out ahead, pressing imaginary buttons and wiggling an invisible stick at the television.

“ _Nyew nyew nyew nyew—nyew nyew nyew nyew. Byaw, byaw_.”

She only whispers the fireballs like she’s trying not to disturb whatever’s in the back of her mind. She knocks all her buttons fast but quiet and waggles her stick hard forward, sucks her lips together just a moment, then releases her fingers and raises her paws high.

“ _Kuuu, bwah_! _Shaaah—shaaah_.”

Crushed it.

The window in the bedroom soon patters louder, the little skyline that Lilou gets through it fully smeared. Doesn’t matter. She sits at Vivienne’s desk with her toes in the air and her paws at her sides, staring up at the computer without touching anything. Her eyes have glazed over. Her fingers have no instruction what to do with themselves.

She’s not really in the mood. She usually isn’t. But not being in the mood isn’t going to get her off for that second or two it works, so eventually, she raises her paw to the mouse.

**WARNING - ARE YOU 18 OR OVER AND WILLING TO—**

Yes, yes, yes already. Lilou’s eyes are already tired clicking through it. But without having really decided what to browse, she pulls her paw over the keyboard and taps out her automatic first search.

‘Braixen’ results: four hundred and seventy-seven. One new.

But Lilou peers an inch closer at the top result and frowns. The thumbnail for this latest video showcases the pokemon partner, as always, and by the familiar breaks and curls in the tufts of her ears she’s a Braixen who Lilou recognizes from previous searches. She’s dolled up again in surely hand-measured clothing, the intricate kind that takes a lot of money to keep getting made. The kind for human consumption. It’s the sort of video someone keeps putting out no matter how much the Braixen in it—

_never watch again, please forget, can’t help her, please never mind_

Lilou just clicks away. She pulls her paws back to her lap, smooths her skirt, then sits still. Stares at the screen. Then: what about that Walrein video she noticed, like, maybe a day ago? His thumbnail looked happy.

“taking this big boys whole thing in 1 go”—there it is. Lilou clicks it open and settles her wrist down again.

Tripod shot. Dim. Steady view angled low near the floor, a Walrein sprawling fully on his back over a squished shag rug, skin wrapped tight around all his blubber and bulk. Breath blowing easy through his tusks and fur, but hard to tell if through a smile. Bumpy footlong cock standing at attention for a lady in mosaic who’s crawling on hands and knees to give it a licking. Thicker than the woman’s arm, fat in every sense, the same story as for that Whimsicott but in reverse—too big to fit in any human.

The woman, holding his base steady, wetting the tip with a loud suck, puckering for it again and again. Faceless, but tongue in full view. Only her vaguely light hair, possibly dark skin distinguishable in the low lights. The Walrein, sighing his fat neck backward and pressing his flippers lower down his sides, bulging in her mouth. Maybe not smiling, but already satisfied. Watching her go, and her, going at it.

Lilou hangs back. She’s found nothing to get herself started, but at this point, she wants to see how it actually ends.

The woman’s licking—she’s practiced it. Brushing her wet open mouth up and down the whole shaft, hand on the other side, drawing her lips closer and kissing intermittently until it’s gobs of her own saliva she keeps making out with. The Walrein, dribbling a bubbly kind of clear liquid that the woman’s quickly rubbing together with her spit. Lubing him up while he’s still reaching peak height and piqued quivers.

This can’t end well.

Now the Walrein is looking up at her, the fur flowing off his cheeks kind of bouncing with his jaw like twitching whiskers. Dick already shining like a freshly waxed monument, and still the woman is reaching back off camera and bringing in a bottle, stretching out gobs of petroleum jelly and wrestling both her hands around his whole shaft, rubbing hard but sliding easy, holding his dick as if admiring a gifted man’s forearm. Standing up, lifting her face off camera, stretching apart her cheeks as the Walrein watches through baited breath for most of the audience waiting with him.

It happens. Cock meeting asshole, cheeks squelching far further apart, kind of genuine moaning from above as asshole meets base. Up and down again, but tighter and louder and longer now than anything Lilou feels comfortable even watching through a screen. She paws only up to the mouse and hovers over the video’s timer bar. There are still minutes of this left.

Lilou slides higher up her chair and tucks her legs closer together. She frowns. Should she really have expected penetration? No. No, she really shouldn’t have.

She clicks out. Now she’s really not in the mood.

 

 

There is no end to the week. Not this one, not any. The calendar says Saturday closes it out, but that’s a lie. Some people think Sunday’s an end. It isn’t. When every week of Lilou’s life blends into the next, there’s never an end to any one week.

It’s Friday. The trickiest of weekdays. Friday isn’t really a day, but the beginning of that seamless phase between what are still technically weeks. It’s the most deceptive day of these faux weeks because sometimes, just occasionally, it feels like it might be a good day. There’s a warm cozy feeling in Lilou’s chest that tells her she won’t be completely alone tomorrow, and even again the day after. It feels like she has strength in her limbs again.

And then Vivienne shakes her awake anyway, shoving her back and forth under the blanket, saying, “Come on, Lilou, time for breakfast!”

What Lilou is fed may not technically be food. The bag says it is, sure, but Lilou often wonders if that’s true by any strict scientific measure. (It’s fucking not.)

She eats without consciously realizing it. Her eyes glazed over as soon as she sat down, and her paw scoops further bites with mechanical practice. She chews with the minimal effort required. Her butt is numb again on Vivienne’s scratchy woven dining chair, but really, isn’t that for the best? More of her body should follow suit.

“Okay… and that’s that,” Vivienne says, tapping straight her sheet of printouts and slipping them under the same arm as her purse. “Lilou—are you going to be good today while I’m gone?”

Lilou hears the words, but nothing compels her to respond at all. Without even turning to acknowledge Vivienne, Lilou reaches her paw into her bowl again and munches from the next bite.

But Vivienne doesn’t say anything more. The strange silence is enough to distract Lilou from her routine, and she turns after all to see Vivienne standing still at the other end of the table. She did her hair up in a bun today, Lilou notices, brushed tight. She put a lot of effort into keeping it professional. But now, she looks back to Lilou with a frown.

“Right,” Vivienne says a little slower. “Okay. I’ll see you tonight, okay?”

They actually see each other eye to eye a moment before Lilou looks to her food again. She munches some more, then—flits a paw goodbye, at least.

Vivienne steps back, shores up her purse. It takes her another second to make for the door, and she pauses at the threshold on her way out. A little lower still: “Bye, Lilou.”

And even after that, with a click of the lock, Lilou is all alone again.

Her time in the shower today is spent cleaning herself. She scrubs a bar of the good soap between her fingers, washes her face, spins in slow circles under the water until right before she’s dizzy to rinse off the lather and soak her whole coat. She massages shampoo deep into the thinner fibers down her legs and rubs more delicate in the more delicate spots, but keeps it clean. She still doesn’t hum.

Then the rain is all gone. The sky is bright and the city is warm, maybe, but Lilou leaves that experience to others as she hangs her paws over the seat of Vivienne’s swivel chair and hoists herself into it.

**WARNING—**

Lilou clicks through, pushes the mouse to the search bar, lifts a finger over the keyboard. Four hundred and seventy-eight results meet her query. One new again. The thumbnail is unfamiliar. Brand new strangers await her voyeurism, but it’s Friday. Lilou hesitates this time.

The kind of strangers hidden away in these videos—Vivienne warned her about them. Not in general. Lilou got caught the very first time she browsed. The one time Vivienne didn’t announce coming back home, the one time Lilou didn’t hear the lock click, and all the precious seconds wasted trying to close the tab before she already saw everything—

_‘Lilou, oh, sweetie, the kind of people who want to do those things to you are very bad. They’re not good people. You can’t look at things like that, okay? Oh, my poor girl.’_

Not even a scolding. Just a life lesson. One of Vivienne’s few that Lilou remembers.

_‘The only kind of people who’d want to fuck you are already fucked in the head.’_

Not what she said, but Lilou got the message. No decent someone will ever want her. There’s a sign nailed over her heart that reads ‘Weirdos only,’ apparently. She didn’t always think it was true, but now—it’s Friday, and it’s supposed to be the day she feels better, and she doesn’t want to be let down again.

Now, it turns out Vivienne knows some things.

So Lilou smooths down her skirt despite the tufts she’s already parted. She scoots higher in the chair and pulls her feet closer up, then clicks the mouse.

Smartphone recording. Steady. Hind end of a bed, a human on his back, a Braixen lying between his legs and kicking her ankles in the air, grinning just behind his erection. The Cock. Meaty, flexed, healthy pink glow. Actually shaved. Smooth.

“Hey, guys, this is Kelsi,” someone grunts from behind the camera—the Cock has a voice. It’s deep, pushed to a lower register than sounds natural, but it’s clear. A little douchey, like angling for a macho sound, but human. “Just got her new tags in the mail and she wants to show ‘em off for you. Give ‘em a look, Kelsi.”

Now the Braixen is leaning onto one elbow, lifting up her chin an inch for a collar around her neck. Still giving eyes to the camera—flickering orange and yellow, warm, never safe to touch—but catching two gold heart-shaped tags over her paw and jingling them forward, slipping a finger across each tag, dangling the inscriptions clear to see. On top, ‘Daddy’s Little Girl’; beneath it, ‘Bad Bitch.’

The computer screen seems to grow wider out from Lilou’s center of vision, but she keeps still.

“You like those, girl?” the Cock says. “She earned ‘em. You want to show these guys how you earned ‘em, Kelsi?”

The tags keep jingling as the Braixen drops them—pulling herself closer to the Cock, hanging her lips wide open and dangling her tongue all the way down, sticking her wet mouth against the base with a hot breath around it. She’s lapping slow and heavy, gasping for the camera, drawing her lips closer and sliding a kiss all around the bottom of the shaft. Licking, dragging her upper lip back down with her when she goes for a taste of the sac.

When she looks to the camera—the way she looks to her audience—she’s not here for them. They’re here for her. Her eyes demand testimony, witness to her work and her skill and the Cock she drapes herself around.

And the Cock, swaying only against the wet weight laid upon it, keeps still for the Braixen but for groaning deep behind the camera, “That’s good, girl… aw, right there. I like that.”

Panting. The Braixen controls it. Giving every hot breath in her lungs for the show, wrapping her fingers around the shaft and slurping it, pushing against it, lifting herself to the thick wet tip once she has a firm grip beneath it. Pulling away her head and shaking back the lush fur in her ears, Daddy’s Little Girl jingling loud and clear—then rubbing the Cock’s sheath, rubbing it low, pulling it down with a quick little stretch of the skin until she has her glistening prize just an inch away. She kisses it.

Lilou’s fingers have since figured out what they’re doing. She’s already spread her skirt. Slouched worse than she realizes. Her knees dangle over the edge of her chair, but her toes clutch around each other like morning dew clung upon the leaves.

“Aw, yeah… keep going, girl.”

Lilou grits the breath in her throat and restrains the depth of her paw, holds back her wrist. Paces herself. Makes this _last_ at least.

So she kisses it. Kissing, lapping, lavishing her lips everywhere over the single square inch where she has the Cock at its most sensitive. Her fingers curl around the other side and she moves slower, leans in, tilts her cheeks and opens her tongue to the embrace—she draws him in and shares something not sexy but _intimate_ , sucks soft, swaps juices, lets him wet her just the same as she gifts over him. It’s the perfect size around her mouth. It’s the perfect partner to her gentle touch and deep needs.

“Aw, girl… show ‘em how good you do it.”

Her eyes flutter from the wet session below back to the camera. Her lips keep sucking head, but now she grins above her work like she’s in on a secret. She pops away with all the moist strings she’s nurtured hanging from her tongue, her work shining like a proud beacon top to bottom, her paw wrapping it tight at the base. Two fingers hold it in place while the rest curl away like holding a teacup. She stares down the camera, brushes her other paw over her cheek, then slides her face all the way down her man.

God it fits. It’s a perfect fit the whole way down, smooth, thick, just big enough to stuff herself with while she sucks to the _bone_ , sucks the feeling out of his legs. Shivers for everyone. Her man tells her, “Ffffuck yeah, that’s the spot… how’d you get this good….”

She bobs over and holds him firm, cheeks fluffing up and down with her and tags jingling beneath her and no distractions from the bubbling heat pitching in them both. She gives that _mmh-mmh-glk-mngh-mngh_ for his ears only. “Oh, _shit_ , girl….” She peels off—

Spunk shoots over her grin, her tongue, sticks and smears all along her snout, and she just keeps rubbing her man out until his wet spasms run dry and his hips quit shaking. Her smile rests in the style of just having won a bet. All the cum seeps or else rolls down over her mouth, but she just dabs at his shivering tip, laps at the last string.

“And that’s [her] for you,” her man gasps behind the camera. “[Girl], you want to show ‘em how much more you like taking?”

Can her man really still go? She pats his hard cock against her cheek just to prove it, savoring that next little groan from him. Then she pushes onto her knees. She balances her paws over his thighs and edges up his crotch, Bad Bitch jingling with each inch. She settles upright and spreads her skirt, puffy black lips squared bright and wet behind the tip of her previous labor. Swelled. Dripping. Receptive. She’s already close. She lifts one paw from her skirt, beckons a finger toward the camera, draws it closer. Then she slips forward, peels on—without a hitch, without pause, _ecstasy_ —

The video stutters. The screen stops at a frame right before the Braixen gets her own release. A loading bar spins over her vulva.

Lilou pulls out her fingers and shoves up in her chair. She collects her gasps and lifts her drier paw to the mouse, exiting full screen and looking in a daze to the corner of the monitor’s desktop. The wireless signal is dead.

There are no tissues on the desk. Her fingers, goddammit—without anything else to clean them with, she grimaces and wipes them over her skirt. Lilou pushes out from the chair and tromps puffy and fuming across the bedroom to Vivienne’s closet, reaching high for the handle before she scoots open the door. There’s a shelf inside at the very top, and beside other little boxes and broken knickknacks, there sits the router.

She’s seen Vivienne fix this before. It’s just a normal problem. Not a big deal. She just needs to unplug a cord, plug it back in, and the Internet will work again. Lilou just needs to reach the router.

But there it sits at twice her height.

She takes in the whole bedroom in a glance, but nothing is in here that will get her up to that shelf. Chair? It’s a swivel. She’ll break her neck. Bedside table? She can’t move that.

_literally anything just find something anything_

Her chest beats hard and it won’t calm. Her paws reach toward smoothing down her skirt, but she stops them— _not now_.

From the living room, Lilou scrunches her feet against the carpet and drags a dining chair toward the closet, gasping harder now than ever. Groomed every night but never offered any _exercise_ , goddammit, _goddamn it_ ! She strains her wrists against the woven scratchy bullshit again, drags it some more, breaks for doubling over on her knees, panting. Drags, drags, fucking _moves it_.

And when she finally gets the chair right in front of the closet, right under that shelf, and she drags herself up and stretches her paw for the cord—

It doesn’t happen. Her fingers barely scrape the edge of the wood, even that out of reach.

She still can’t reach. She can’t reach.

Lilou claws at the shirts hanging in front of her, grips what hangers are there, tugs herself another inch so she can just get a finger up there—just to nudge that black box closer, just to tip it off—

Something slips. There’s a sudden drop of air around her as the cotton blouses she’s tugged herself up with slide loose off their hangers and Lilou’s face smacks through a dozen more shirts at once, then a crack against her knee as she tumbles off the chair and crashes shoulder-first into a pile of sneakers and boots and pain, a bundle of hot needles jabbing all at once inside her knee.

The world takes its sweet time righting itself, but Lilou shoves herself onto her back despite the spinning. She—her lips quiver, but they’re the wrong set. Her paws are fists wrapped around her leg, not nursing her knee but _despising_ it.

This much—even over this littlest thing, she has no power.

Lilou grapples herself back up, ignores the pain, shoves aside the boots, and stumbles over to the bed. She has to hop most of the way. Rather than climbing up any further, she grips her fists over the sheets she can reach and punches them. She kicks them. She slams her foot again and again over the polyester no matter how much more it stings, no matter how much this hurts, because _this_ she has power over.

Her legs buckle. She slides down over the floor and a fresh jolt of pain surges from her knee, but it’s masked by the tears spilling down her—oh. And now she’s crying again.

She huddles her face into the crook of her arms, leaving just these new sobs exposed. Tries to hide from herself like a child and fails at it all.

Television. Who knows which channel. The news. Lilou rests her leg over the sofa by way of lying motionless on her stomach, face tilted toward whatever news things the screen keeps telling her. She doesn’t need to go to the bathroom. She’s not hungry. Her skirt’s fine whichever direction it’s pointed. She can see that it’s getting darker out from the corner of her eye, but the window feels too far for even her gaze to travel.

But that means it’s now Friday night. It’s the weekend. She made it. Doesn’t feel like much of an achievement anymore, but she made it.

Rattles from the front door echo behind Lilou over a couple of news anchors chuckling at a joke she missed. The knob clicks open. Footfalls poof easy over the carpet as Vivienne calls, “I’m home, Lilou! God, the client was shit today. Horrible. It’s so good to be—kicking—off—”

Little swipes of leather lead up to a couple of small thuds beneath her voice.

“—my shoes, and just to be home again, right? I needed this.”

Lilou pushes herself upright onto just one of the cushions. Vivienne shuffles closer, clicks on the overhead light, says, “All the lights off again? You’re so silly. Come on, we need to brighten this place up.”

She turns on a lamp, too, on her way over to the sofa, but her smile is dimmer tonight in the bright lights. She sighs, tugs out the bobby pins from her bun, collapses it into a dirty blonde pile down her shoulders before dumping herself at the other end of the sofa from Lilou. Vivienne only offers her a glance before she takes the remote and turns down the volume. Then she squares up.

“Lilou?”

Lilou looks over through a slouch. Vivienne clasps her hands quiet in her own lap, trying to look her girl in the eye but constantly darting to any other feature.

“I have some good news and some bad news.”

Lilou looks back to the nothing on television. Vivienne breathes in, then says, “I know I’ve been really busy with work lately, and been spending a lot of extra time on these design projects, but—I’ve been doing really well on these projects, too, and actually, that’s the good news. People at the company are really noticing me. They’re depending on me, right?”

Vivienne claps her hands next. She sucks in her lips, still pretending to smile.

“So, the bad news is that I do have to work again tomorrow.”

Lilou holds steady at first, but her body tilts limp toward the armrest until her spine is bent over it like a wet noodle. There’s no other energy in her limbs to complain.

“I know, I know,” Vivienne says, reaching over and rubbing Lilou on the paw. “But it’s not that bad, really, because I already called Nicolas—”

Wait what?

“—and I convinced him to spend the day with you again!”

Lilou shoves back up. Vivienne smiles like normal, big and broad, pulling back and folding her arms like she’s proven some point. “Right? You’ll still get to have fun. I’m not ruining your weekend this time, right?”

‘Convinced’? He didn’t want to agree to it. He was pressured. He felt obligated. He just wants to be a good neighbor. He shouldn’t have to do this. He doesn’t want to.

The paw holding Lilou upright grows heavier. She feels like she’s floating somewhere deep and cold.

This isn’t a confrontation anyone deserves. Not even her.

Vivienne’s grin stutters after a moment more of watching Lilou, and she lowers her arms again. She actually frowns. She lifts a hand to Lilou’s shoulder and says, “I’ll turn my phone off for all of Sunday, okay? That one’s just for us. We’ll go somewhere you like. You just be thinking where to go, okay?”

Lilou’s gaze turns naturally back to the television, eyes wide and shoulders heavy. Heavier all the more as Vivienne shuffles closer and snuggles up, pulling her head down over Lilou’s, hair falling over fur—taking the remote back up, grinning some more, sighing, “Now let’s find something else to watch, if you don’t mind.”

_YES I FUCKING MIND_

It’s engraved over every thought spinning in Lilou’s head, but as the cage around her body completes itself—Vivienne drawing her legs up the other side of the sofa—her limbs feel even emptier. She resigns to her fate, maybe—except she can’t. There’s no way. She can’t do this.

No, now she just panics silently over it.


	3. Finale, or So We'll See

Vivienne rings the doorbell, being the one with any feeling left in her fingers. Lilou waits beside her, below her, mostly staring into the abyss and hoping it looks back to swallow her whole. She’s smoothed down her skirt so many times this morning that she’s had to poof it back up half as often. Vivienne fiddles with her phone again, sure, grinning at some message she’s tapping out—and back in just a ponytail, ready for just some casual day at the office without worry of what someone else might really think of her.

It’s slow footfalls that echo from inside, paced steps, before Nicolas opens the door without a smile and steadies himself at the threshold. He stands with one hand already in his pocket—in sweatpants again, but it’s a sweater he wears on top today. Covering himself up. The green and brown swirls mixing in his eyes, at least—

Lilou doesn’t reach those before she looks to the floor.

“Hey,” he says. “Come on in.”

“Nicolas, I _really_ owe you one,” Vivienne says, slipping her phone down into her purse. “Seriously—if you ever need a favor, just let me know, okay? You really got our backs again and I hope you know how much we both appreciate it.”

A hand behind Lilou’s shoulder guides her forward. Lilou’s feet move the only direction they’re allowed, but every step into Nicolas’s apartment feels less welcome. She keeps her back tight and straight like some prim little lady, but her head hangs no matter her effort against the weight over it. Her paws—well, no change. She’s been clutching them at each other this whole time.

“Yeah, I get it. I got you,” Nicolas says above her to Vivienne. “You, um—?”

“Yes, I’ve got to get to work,” Vivienne says, hand tugging away from Lilou. “Here’s her—wait, where—oh, there it is—here’s her lunch again, and you know the drill, so she can eat whenever. You know what—you can let her have a snack today, too. I don’t mind. And my phone’ll be on me, so just call me if you need anything.”

A plastic baggy crinkles between Vivienne and Nicolas, followed by a familiar smack over the counter.

“Gotcha. Have fun, I guess.”

“Right? Thanks again, Nicolas, seriously. You be good for him, Lilou, okay? I’ll be back tonight. You two have a great day!”

The handle rattles firm behind Lilou before a tiny rusty creak joins the door in clicking shut. The miniature clopping of wedge shoes barely echoes back up from the stairwell as Vivienne goes. Nicolas keeps as still as Lilou while she hesitates, gathers what air is scattered around her lungs, focuses on breathing.

That focus breaks as soon as even the echoes just out the door die off. Lilou looks up long and high at Nicolas, tired already of her own gaze, but she doesn’t hide that broken longing within it. She doesn’t have much of anything left to hide.

Nicolas looks back to her with something like a nervous frown he’s trying to contain, but he wants to show. One hand rubbing behind his neck, the other still in his pocket and all too still. Wearing his lazy clothes, but he hasn’t gotten sloppy—he’s been to the hairdresser. His hair is natural and curly again, laid from the bottom of his scalp into neat cornrows, then coalescing loose across the top of his head into a flowery bundle of kinks and spirals.

And his eyes still beckon anything that drifts into their wake.

Lilou thought it would be harder to stare so long into them again, but it’s so easy.

Nicolas pulls away from his neck and hangs his thumb back, saying, “You want to sit down? Or, um—you hungry? Want something to drink?”

Lilou hangs her paw forward, pointing small toward his sofa. Cheeks still burning but hidden under her grooming. She looks down again only to shuffle one foot over the other.

“Actually, I was thinking we could sit up here.”

It’s just the bar counter Nicolas points his thumb to. Just the two stools sitting out front of it.

Lilou’s step falters.

“Oh,” Nicolas says, looking them over. He shuffles in socks around the counter and takes one stool, lifting it to his chest and scootching back around to clatter it on the kitchen side. He sits, clutching his hands down over the hem of his seat. His gaze falters, too, before he looks over to the opposite stool and says, “Just to talk.”

It smells like harsh chemicals near the kitchen. Faint, literally watered down, but it’s an easy scent to pick up over the lack of anything else immediate. Lemon fresh. Like effort? Like cleaning up for a guest instead of babysitting.

It reminds Lilou of the even fainter hope she has to push back down.

She sets her feet both on the floor again, pulls her arms back to her sides. Her gaze grazes the carpet, but she pads over to the other side of the counter and tugs her paws up onto her stool. The smell of cleaner rustles through her nostrils from the granite surface, but as she climbs higher toward Nicolas’s level, more or less, she finds it easiest to keep looking down.

Where she finds a deck of little rainbow cards stacked up neat, but with words instead of pictures or numbers. A computer tablet lies to the side, but Lilou’s gaze drifts over the top card.

‘What’s your favorite color?’

“Don’t know if these are any good,” Nicolas says, leaning back. “Picked them up at the dollar store, so… I mean, they’re just some get-to-know-each-other stuff. I just figured they could… facilitate.”

He leans back forward a second and pulls away the card on top, flipping it into a little discard pile and muttering, “Guess that’s a dumb one. Can skip that.”

Lilou slips her paw over that card next, pulling it closer to her side, keeping it flipped.

“Or—yeah,” Nicolas says, nodding a little, pulling back. He shifts his hand over the tablet, sliding it in Lilou’s direction. He says, “And you can use a keyboard, right? Will this work?”

He taps the screen brighter to a notepad application, the alphabet already laid out in a scramble underneath. Lilou peers closer over it, shiny and black and polished, but her gaze flickers quicker back to Nicolas. She stretches her fingers over the first card and flips it around toward him, hiding her face behind it, pointing across the counter.

“Mine?” he says, folding his arms but leaning them over the granite. His face squeezes tighter a moment, kind of humming before he says, “Blue, maybe? Don’t know. What about you?”

Lilou looks from him to the tablet, but the card barely hides more than her mouth. Her blushing is invisible, anyway. It’s not like it’s a secret anymore, right? Why not just be honest?

So through a shorter gesture, she points up to his eyes.

Nicolas waves his hand around his cheeks, around his curls. “You mean brown? Black?”

Lilou pulls back her paw and points much shorter to her own eyes, averting them.

“Oh, red,” Nicolas says. “That’s cool. That’s—where do I have red on—?”

Lilou shakes her head, pointing quicker between each of their eyes.

“Oh,” Nicolas says. He smiles. “Hazel? That’s not a color. It’s multiple colors. I would’ve said multiple colors if I knew that’s the rules we’re playing by.”

Lilou pulls the card back down with the smallest grin underneath, laying it over their discard pile beside the rest of the cards. Nicolas’s smile recedes about the same time as hers, but not to the same nervous frown as before.

The next card in the deck reads, ‘What’s the biggest secret you’ll share with a friend?’

“Shit,” Nicolas mutters, grabbing for it, “should’ve vetted these—”

A paw stops his hand. Lilou stares at their touch, her fingers over his, but she doesn’t look up. Nicolas pulls his hand away from the deck, saying, “Okay. But you first this time.”

Lilou tucks her paws over her skirt, just tapping her fingers together, swinging her feet twice before she stops them. Then as if she’s changed her mind, she pulls the tablet over all the way and taps out one letter at a time with a finger from each paw, no pausing between keys, already familiar with the layout even if she can’t stretch across it like humans do.

She swivels the tablet around to Nicolas. Her answer: _(T)hat (I)’m not stupid_.

Nicolas stares at the words with a nod, long and slow. He thinks with his head down, but Lilou can see his mind turning behind the glance of his hazel she still gets.

“Biggest secret to friends,” he mutters, shifting his elbows, resting a fist under his cheek. “I guess, uh—that I hate this city.”

He keeps staring at the screen.

“I miss home.”

Lilou sucks her bottom lip. She swivels the tablet back around slower and deletes her words, then leans in and flips to the next card.

‘What’s your favorite number?’

Both of them stare at the question. Lilou slips her paw back over her mouth, restraining her giggles, but Nicolas slides his hand flat over his scalp and laughs. His fingers nestle between cornrows and kinks and his whole face curls back into a smile, the little dimples by his eyes stretching warm and free and twinkling again with white teeth, full cheeks, bright eyes laid thin but big. Big. That’s how he smiles even through his chuckling, and Lilou can’t help but let her giggles escape with his the longer he goes.

“I maybe made a bad purchase,” Nicolas says, wiping his hand over his mouth. “I am truly not prepared to answer this question, sorry.”

No matter their fun, Lilou’s smile fades again as he quiets down. She sets her paws back to the tablet but hesitates typing so quickly this time, fingers only hovering before she taps out her next message through tightened lips and cold feet.

_(D)o you still like me at all?_

She turns the screen around and pulls her gaze down to her twiddling paws, but immediately Nicolas says, “Yeah, of course. You’re—”

He rubs his hand down his neck, looking away while Lilou peeks back up. He says, “I hope you didn’t take it personal, how we left last week. It’s new to me. Nobody’s liked me like that before. I needed time to figure out, uh… why you would, I guess. Or just what I should do.”

_tell him he’s beautiful and nice and also your sex together would be beautiful too_

Lilou tugs her knees a little closer. Nicolas looks back to her without either of them shrinking away, but he waves his hand over the cards and says, “So I got these. And they’re not great. They ain’t great.”

His smile lingers through a twist in his lips, but it’s fallen from his eyes. Leaving one paw still clutched in her lap, Lilou leans over toward him, stops in the middle, and flips over to the next card.

‘What kind of pokemon did you have as a child?’

Nicolas shakes his head. “Sorry. They ain’t great.”

Lilou takes the card anyway, covering her muzzle again but not hiding her gaze, at least, as she points across the counter. Nicolas sighs inward, leans back out, tucks his arms tighter again.

“I didn’t have any,” he says, “but my friends growing up did. Back then, it sucked. Now, looking back—I got to hang with all the other kids without taking care of any.”

He tilts back just far enough that he doesn’t fall off his stool, looking up into space somewhere beyond Lilou.

“I mean, human or not, we were all kids. But the parents, y’know, made my friends take care of their pokemon like they had to raise someone of their own. You know—’good boy’; ‘don’t do that’; changing litter, like the toilet was off limits. So all of them got raised that way, but I got to hang with everybody on the same terms.”

He holds back a clear frown like it’s something he doesn’t want to admit to her face. Then he sighs. He looks back to Lilou and says, “So when did you and Vivi meet up?”

The card hangs over Lilou’s face before she’s willing to give it up, but she sets it down and taps her way through her next response before swiveling it to Nicolas.

 _(H)er parents got me from a breeder when she was 13. (I) was a reward for good grades. (S)he thought it was cute that (I) knew how to use the toilet so all she had to do was feed me_.

“You ever try talking with her like this, like, with a computer?” Nicolas says.

Lilou’s fingers hover again, but she lowers them this time. She just nods.

“And nothing?” Nicolas says.

_and like most parents or pet owners thinks ‘I am alive’ means ‘Praise me’_

Lilou shrugs.

Nicolas pushes off from his seat, standing up but stepping only toward the refrigerator. He rattles something stiff off from a glass shelf inside and shuts the door, shuffling back to the counter with two juice boxes in hand, motherfucker. Sets one on his side, one on her side, then slides away all the cards in between.

“Think we’re coming up with better questions,” he says. “One for you, one for me, one for you—fair?”

Rather than nodding, Lilou grins something small and looks back to her screen. She taps two-pawed at a bit of a mashing rate, swiveling the tablet around and taking her juice, motherfucker, right after. Nicolas reads it while poking in the straw to his own drink, smile growing back over his lips.

“I don’t use unscented cleaner because I _like_ that lemon scent,” he says, sipping. “I like it when it smells productive in here.”

Lilou sips next, batting her toes at each other out of sight, paws curling together around the plastic box under her smile. It’s a different kind of expression when she doesn’t have to worry about disguising how she really feels.

Then Nicolas sets down his drink and pushes up his sleeves, rolling them out of the way just under his elbows before he leans back onto the counter.

“Do you really like me?”

Shaky voice, but square in the eye. He watches and waits for her.

Lilou lowers her drink and nods, just nods profusely, but she has shirks his gaze across the way. She wants to look him in the eye, but—she sets the box down and pushes her fingers back over the keyboard, keeping a dim gaze over it as she taps out a better response.

_(I) think that you’re great and smart and_

And she knows the next word, but apparently, she’s not yet that honest. Her finger waits over the S key, but she just swivels the screen around with as little as she’s got.

Nicolas pulls back after reading it. Scratches his neck. Fails to hide how uncomfortable he is at the thought that’s still so clear. Lilou can see that much.

“Aight,” he says. He breathes in deep, holds it in like he’s thinking, lets it out a second later. He averts his gaze, too, brushing his fingers over his smooth cheek and studying the wall. “Hey—can I break the rules, go again?”

Lilou lays her paws back over the frills of her skirt, only watching herself smooth them flatter. Nicolas only keeps quiet while he comes up with his next words.

“You want to go see a movie?”

Their eyes lift toward each others’ at the same time.

It’s not often Lilou gets to clutch her paw over her heart as Nicolas locks his apartment behind her, as if it’s really supposed to help restrain the racing inside her. (Turns out it does not.) She knows what all of this is. She can’t pretend different. Her brain won’t let her this time. So Nicolas jingles his keys into his pocket, Lilou tucks the tablet tighter under her arm, and they’re off.

The autumn sun bears down over them the same as last week without any cloud cover—warm, bright, boding. Maybe. Nicolas pulls his blue sunglasses out from his other pocket and slips them on as they round the corner, but Lilou angles her little computer away from the light and types another message before handing it up to her _ddddate_ oh shut up.

_(W)here did you move from?_

Nicolas scans the screen, hands it back down, and waves his whole arm with his finger as he points to their left. “Boondocks out east, man. No one’s heard of it. Mostly just too far from here for day trips.”

He looks as at home in his sweater as back at the apartment. Lilou’s used to whatever heat she must bear in the cage of her fur, but Nicolas only pushes his sleeves an inch higher like he don’t need no damn t-shirt. He matches Lilou’s easy pace easily and shakes his hands around in his pockets, saying, “How old were you when Vivi got you?”

Lilou strums her fingers above the keyboard as she decides whether to tell him never to ask a woman’s age. And for all she knows, that breeder lied when he insisted he kept track of dates of birth at all.

But she’d rather keep up as much of an honest streak as she’s got, so she types _10_ anyway. _And that is all_.

The next crosswalk they wait at is busy as they close in on downtown, but the strangers standing and waiting with them hardly notice and Lilou hardly notices them as she types out her next question. Handing it to Nicolas without looking up to him, it reads, _(T)oo late already to ask if you have a girlfriend…?_

The pedestrian signal turns white for walk, but Nicolas hangs back an extra second as he grins. He and Lilou tread behind the crowd, and he says, “Nah, but I got a brother. He’s gay. Everybody thought he’d be the one to move up here, live it up, but I got a job offer and he got a rural boy.”

Before he rubs his chin and figures out his own question, Lilou takes back the tablet and taps out a quicker message, handing it right back.

_(T)ell me about him!_

Nicolas looks between Lilou and the screen. His smile curls into a smirk widening every glance between the two. The thoughts under his skin are so clear Lilou can read them through his sunglasses. She’s breaking the rules, too.

Leading them past the shops through more of a weekend crowd, Nicolas says, “Well, his name’s Aubert. He’s the big one. Does sports, gym, shirtless posts twice a day for if anybody forgot he’s jacked. He’s funny, though. You know those guys who brag about how big they are, but he plays it up. Says he’s a ‘meatsack,’ ‘maximum fleshload,’ all sorts of shit.”

Nicolas grins slick.

“Keeps saying he’s just fat in all the right places.”

_(O)lder or younger?_

“Oh, he’s my big bro. Always my big bro, so he brags about me instead. Says I’m the smart one, but we about the same there.”

Lilou crosses another street beside him and tucks the tablet under her arm again. Nicolas sighs, stares mostly forward as they go.

“Any little guys you got separated from at the breeder?”

Lilou considers how long to put it.

 _(S)eparated at birth, maybe_.

They elbow by busier bodies as the stores get taller, longer, franchised. Nicolas slips his sunglasses over his forehead as shade from the block covers him and Lilou instead.

_(W)hy did you take the job here? (J)ust the money?_

“Not just the money. Thought it’d be good for me. Expand my worldview, meet people, makes friends from halfway across the world, right? I bought into that experience they sell.”

_(I)t didn’t work that way for you?_

“It did for a while, but man… if you ain’t live right next to somebody, they just don’t care about seeing you. They just here for their jobs, too. You got to keep chasing them to hang, and after a while, it’s hard to feel like it’s worth it.”

They slip inside the cinema and line up at the automated ticket machine. Lilou peers for any signs posted about her ilk, but Nicolas pulls out his wallet already, just fiddling with it. “Which one you want? I’m paying, so you pick.”

He points to a line of posters blasted over the far wall. Lilou looks at them next, and, uh—

 

  * **ON SEPTEMBER 14th, A FATHER WILL RISK EVERYTHING TO SAVE HIS SON!**



 

  * ALL HER LIFE YSELDA WANTED TO BE A POKEMON MASTER. HERE’S HER CHANCE.



 

  * _They didn’t think their love could last. She didn’t think he’d fight so hard to keep it alive._



 

—without asking for suggestions, she picks one quickly.

Nicolas boops in her choice at the machine, slides his card, collects their tickets. He glances over the text on the paper as they move out from the line and says, “We got twenty minutes ‘til they let us in. Let’s find us a seat.”

He gives Lilou her ticket on their way to a bench, and she reads over it, too, but what she notices is the Children/Pokemon price reduction on hers.

Nicolas takes his seat at the end of some backless metal slats laid out in front of all the posters. Lilou sits beside him, of course, but still at the same height of just a child. Other humans sits at the other side of all these benches, checking their phones or chatting without looking, but more pace around the cinema lobby in bigger laughing groups. Those people keep glancing around when they’re not the subject of conversation, and even though Lilou’s watching them the same, she doesn’t like how long their gazes fall up and down by hers.

At least she’s allowed in here, right? But this time she doesn’t take the body pillow next to her.

“Who came up with ‘Lilou,’ anyway?” he says. “Vivi, or somebody else?”

Lilou looks to Nicolas before she taps the tablet on again. She keeps it at an angle he can read from while she types as she says, _(I)t’s from before (I) remember_.

Then with a quick deletion, she says, _(C)ould this ever really work??_

She peers up longer. Everyone else in the lobby might see her stare, but their eyes aren’t whose she needs to see. So as Nicolas looks from the screen to her, and his gaze is slim and bright and full anyway, he says, “You mean talking like this?”

Lilou shakes her head firmly. A littler, real curl reaches back to Nicolas’s face.

“Why not?” He stumps his elbows over his knees. Shrugs. “I mean, we both know why not, but—why not?”

Lilou looks back to her screen, reads it over again for herself.

_just why can’t he be right?_

She sets the tablet down over her lap. She leans her head over, clutches her paws one over the other in her lap, touches down upon his sweater. Her fur tangles over him again and her face feels the direct heat under his clothes, but Nicolas doesn’t shift this time. His heart’s steady. He just lifts an arm around her shoulder, wraps her even warmer.

“Need to tell Vivi, though.”

Lilou tugs away from him, eyes wide. Nicolas just gives her a look back.

“Would you really be good with this once a week, if that?” he says. “You good with guessing when we could see each other again?”

_good with letting him go because you’re scared?_

No, but—what if Vivienne stops them? Separates them? What if Nicolas never gets invited over and Vivienne never lets Lilou out of her sight again? What about all the other nevers, the what ifs, the no ways?

Nicolas still rests his hand over her shoulder. No answers to offer. Just that swirl in his eyes.

Lilou looks forward. She leans back against him. Eyes big and messed up under the surface, but she nestles her cheek tight again and keeps her paws in the company of her knees. It’s an answer she has no more of.

So the movie begins. Lilou sits to the right of Nicolas. No popcorn or soda between them, but the armrest stays down. Dark enough to slip her paw under his hand, but she doesn’t.

“You need to understand this is your last chance. I’m only going to ask you _one_ more time. _Where the hell is my son?_ ”

Picture a big-screen view of one cut-up man holding a head-bleeding man by the collar. Floor covered in a broken window, but the frame sticks shoulder to shoulder between two emotional men, one dragged over the glass and sad, the other holding him above and _so pissed_. Lilou can tell. He’s mentioned it once or twice.

“I can’t tell you where he is.”

“ _Tell me!_ ”

“I—I can’t! You have no idea what they’ll do to me….”

Oh, jeez, then a bullet flies through the blasted window and hits one of the men in the head, but it’s the bad guy it hits. Now he’s dead and we know exactly what they’d do to him.

Lilou slumps an inch lower in the red velvet. This was her answer.

Nicolas keeps the tablet tucked under his sweater, hidden away from prying theater attendant eyes. His legs are tucked up onto his seat, knees hanging in front of his chin and bare feet slipped out from his sandals still on the floor. Face over his fist, elbow on the armrest. He leans farther over, whispers over Lilou, “Reynold? Actual bad guy. Calling it.”

Lilou’s ears perk, but it’s just a numb grin that slips out from her.

“Hoping they fall in love first, though,” Nicolas whispers. “Want to see that drama before the dude’s got to kill him.”

Lilou holds a paw over her mouth to hush herself, but Nicolas whispers, “Just saying, them lonely fathers need some lovin’ too. Should ditch the kid—I want to see it head toward their climactic confession.”

Lilou’s burst of giggles coincides with that one man crashing through another window, diving for his life. No one hears her. No one shushes either of them.

It’s a moment.

Laughter or a jingling behind the lock—whichever comes louder, they soon echo through the apartment together as Nicolas clicks open his front door, ducking his knees low through the entry for Lilou clutched giddy over his back. Her fingers meet so easy around his nape. The scent of hair oils and a distant whiff of deodorant kept her distracted half the way home, but by now, they’ve seeped well and welcome into her eyes-half-closed ambiance.

“Best for last, though, right? I never thought he’d really say that shit,” Nicolas laughs, pulling his keys hand back under Lilou as he toes the door shut. “‘Whatchu seen today, kid—you’re not a boy no more. _Yer a mayne_.’”

He’s been quoting dialogue most of the way home while Lilou’s contented herself between the toasty furls of his sweater. Like it’s never too hot for her space in them.

Nicolas hitches her back up an inch on their stroll toward the sofa, giggling, “And I was just really hoping I’d be coming up with the best lines, y’know? Outdone at every turn, man. I could not keep up. ‘Hey! Drop the gun or I’ll drop it for you. In your fuckin’ _face_.’”

Lilou’s giggles ran out already, but her smile stays close over Nicolas. He kneels lower again, setting her down gentle and cushy in the middle seat. The tablet resting in the crook between them plops flat in her lap as he lets go, but he turns back just as quick and says, “You good for lunch?”

Lilou pushes the tablet away and nods.

“Okay, um—you just wait there,” Nicolas says. He glances toward the kitchen, slides both his hands absently down his cheeks before he wipes them over his pants. He says, “Just… yeah, wait there. I got this.”

He pushes his sleeves higher and takes a brisk turn around the bar counter. Lilou shoves around to the back of the sofa and peeks over, watches him go. The warmth in her chest fades quickly even pressed against the sofa. Her fingers find nothing firm to grip anymore over the cushion.

Can it really be this easy?

Can she really be this easy?

She spends a week moping about getting rejected and as soon as he acts nice to her again she’s wet at the loins. He hasn’t even said he likes her like that.

Does he?

Can he?

Nicolas pulls open a cabinet in the kitchen and draws a pan up from it before moving to the refrigerator. He rustles out a skinny plastic bag from the bottom shelf and a gloopy red jar above it, conking those over the counter before—

“Hey, don’t watch,” he calls back. “This is a surprise.”

Lilou twists back around and slouches until even her ears aren’t poking out up top. He said he hasn’t had the chance to think about it. Is this him thinking about it?

_fucksake just shut up and let him cook for you, you’re halfway there_

It’s not safe to—but Lilou sneaks back into that littlest kind of smile. She bats her paws again, twiddles her thumbs, listens to the metal clanking and plastic unfurling, then takes the remote. She doesn’t pay attention to what channel she flips to.

Five minutes in: it’s mostly commercials Lilou watches whenever she notices what’s on, but little bangings and bubblings and sizzlings come louder than the television anyway. She stretches her legs, twists forward like she’s touching her toes, slides onto her side then pushes off from it then slumps over her stomach, kicks her feet back and forth in the air.

Ten minutes: the loud television voice is right. That is actually a damn fine looking potato peeler. Does Nicolas need a potato peeler? Maybe that chopping in the kitchen is actually him peeling potatoes right now.

Twenty: Lilou lies on her back as clanking echoes from the sink. Her eyes drift that way even though they meet only the back of the sofa again. But this time Nicolas shuffles out from the kitchen after the noise is done.

Lilou shoves up onto her butt to look back over the sofa. Nicolas is by the door to his room pulling down his sleeves, looking back to her just a second and saying, “One more minute. Almost ready. Just wait there.”

He steps in and closes the door behind him. Lilou sinks back over her plush. One arm now lies over her stomach and the other dangles over the edge. The nervous lips remain.

It’s more than a minute when Nicolas opens the door again. Lilou pushes back up only as he walks around the sofa, but now Nicolas sticks his hands in his denim pockets. He’s wearing a button down shirt. Sleeves rolled up to the elbow, but a perfect fit. Crisp like gift wrapping.

Then he lifts one hand toward her. “Ready to go to lunch?”

Lilou takes his hand. She slips off from the sofa, touches her toes back to the carpet, follows his lead as he takes the tablet in his other hand for her. They walk side by side to the bar counter. Nicolas gently steadies Lilou as she lifts into her seat, scooting herself centered, before he places the tablet beside her and takes his place on the other side.

Steam escapes in wisps from the lid of the bowl between them. Nicolas lifts the lid off, blows its cloud aside, and reveals a thick red pasta to Lilou and the plate already laid before her.

“Homemade spaghetti. My mom’s recipe—mostly,” he says. He lifts his free hand to count off. “No onions, no additives, and no alcohol. I made sure. I cooked in some mushrooms that all those health gurus online say won’t be any trouble, and the meatballs are tofu, but they’re primo, believe me. You could have just the meatballs and be like, ‘Yo, I’m set.’”

Lilou sets her paws just on her lap. She glances sheepish between the meal and how satisfied Nicolas looks at his effort in it.

“I mean… whole thing’s still good, though,” he says. “I taste tested. I’ll say it: it’s great.”

He sets down the lid and takes the ladle, filling Lilou’s plate before his own. She takes her fork, takes a bite, and feels the sparkles in her eyes. She gets her anime moment. It’s _amazing_.

Nicolas eats his share the normal way, but grins at her enthusiasm. He says, “I was serious about my good lunch. So now it’s finally a nice date, if I may toot my own horn.”

Lilou gulps down her next bite. Still holding her fork, she reaches for the tablet.

 _(I)t’s always been nice with you_.

She doesn’t flinch telling him anymore, but she swivels the screen back to herself after giving Nicolas just a moment to read it. He smiles into her eyes, takes a bite of his spaghetti. Lilou just deletes the message and types some more.

_(S)o is this your very first date?_

“Oh, yeah,” Nicolas says, still chewing on one side. “I wasn’t lying. Nobody’s invited me on one before, y’know? You got me there.”

He swallows. He wiggles his eyebrows. “And am I the first dude you ever ‘asked out’?”

Lilou squeaks a grin back with her next bite, nods.

_(D)id you ever imagine it going like this?_

Nicolas leans back, chews some more, ponders. He says, “You know how when you’re a kid, you always just assume that you’ll grow up rich? Like, no plan to get there, but you just assume it’ll happen because you want it to. Well, I—me and lots of young guys, I guess—I always assumed a lot about dating. About girls.”

He sighs.

“You know. Hot wife that just comes along naturally, not having to put in effort for her. And me in particular, I just assumed… I’d be better enough for her, eventually.”

Lilou chews quietly, listens instead. Nicolas raises his brow and taps the bowl of spaghetti, saying, “Point being, I did eventually start working toward my goals. So… yeah.”

His dimples shine through again.

“Eventually, I did imagine something like this.”

 _(B)ut, um… did it ever cross your mind when we were hanging out at (V)ivienne’s watching tv? (Y)ou never talk to anyone else when you’re there_.

“Well, besides my imagination, after long enough of it not happening, it stopped crossing my mind that someone would really get to like me. And those folks ain’t my neighbors; them and me’ll never see each other again,” Nicolas says. “And, I mean… is it so bad to admit I like sitting next to the prettiest girl no one else talks to?”

Lilou appreciates her fur as quickly as ever as her cheeks burn underneath. The expression leaks through anyway, she knows. She doesn’t mind.

 _(M)aybe it’s not bad, (I)’d like to think, too, but… (I) know it’s weird_.

“It’s supposed to be,” Nicolas says. He takes another bite, then shrugs. “But turns out, it’s not.”

Lilou tugs her feet closer. She taps out another message, then swivels the tablet around.

 _(T)hanks_.

Nicolas chuckles at that. He swivels himself away, gets up, and strolls to the cabinet, pulling down two glasses. He turns back and says, “So what are we going to do after this?”

Before Lilou can offer her reaction, he waves one full hand at her and says lower, “I mean—Vivi. Tonight, when she gets back. What we doing?”

Lilou pauses her reply, just takes another bite. She sets down her fork as the words come to her.

 _(I) want to be honest with her_.

She doesn’t turn the screen around yet. The rest still comes difficult. Nicolas fills their glasses with water and ice, clinking in two cubes for each, and as he sits back down across from her, she frowns for the rest of her typing.

_(B)ut (I) don’t want us to pretend we know it will go perfectly._

“You sure?” Nicolas says, peering over her words. “I know what I said earlier, but worst case, we don’t see each other again.”

 _(I) know. (I)’m sure_ , Lilou writes. _(S)o, knowing that, if it’s okay with you… (I) want us to go as far as we can tonight_.

She doesn’t turn the screen around for that. She doesn’t even look up. But she can see Nicolas still leaning over the counter, reading her anyway.

Then he leans back off.

He looks away.

“I don’t know if you’d like that,” he says. “I just don’t know if it’s a good idea.”

Lilou’s shoulders hang. Her fingers ache to tap out an apology, an excuse, but—

“I’m small,” Nicolas mutters. “Might be funny to hear out loud, a dude talking about his dick like that, but… it’s not below average. It’s small.”

He doesn’t look back.

“Maybe not a great way to end a nice date.”

Lilou lifts her gaze back to where he hides his. She watches him for the seconds he stews over his admission. The frown he doesn’t want her to see, either. Then her fingers make it to the tablet again, tap quieter, and she pushes it over for him to read. It takes him another moment to bring himself back to the screen.

 _(S)o am (I)_.

Lilou looks him in the eye. Hers, soft. His, deep.

“I’m serious,” he mumbles. “I mean, trust me, I’m not objecting to—y’know… you.”

Lilou leans slow and gentle for the tablet. She pushes it away from both of them. Nicolas looks from it to her, up and down.

That spaghetti is leftovers already.

Nicolas bridal carries Lilou to his room. She dangles just so over his arms, but his grip feels sure around her. He’s not so small as he thinks when she’s wrapped so close to him. She feels… well, she clings to him, but ‘safe’ is so melodramatic.

And Nicolas pauses at the threshold and mutters, “Shit. Shit... I’ll clean this up.”

The bedroom is so much fuller than the rest of his apartment. It’s messy. Books, clothes, magazines strewn out of the way wherever they’ve found room to lodge. More shirts hang on the edge of the laundry hamper than inside it, and the air in here is heavy. This room smells lived in. Like deodorant rubbed off onto the sheets, night sweats aired out the morning after; like a medley of scents too quiet for humans, but weighing Lilou down from the inside, all for her.

Nicolas lowers one arm first and helps her sit over the edge of his bed before he grabs for the embarrassment he sees in his mess. Lilou crosses her ankles, sits patiently, watches him bend as he scoops up his clothes, and even now, here, looks away.

His rumpled sweater from earlier lies next to her on the corner of the bed. She slips a paw underneath it and brings it to her chest. It’s still warm. She unfolds the top, sniffs the collar.

“Oh, come on.”

Nicolas stands by the hamper with his armful of articles. He dumps them in, folds his arms under an easier grin again. Lilou lowers his sweater, but there’s a silly whine to Nicolas’s voice as he chuckles, “Can’t be that bad already.”

He sits down beside her and the mattress creases lower under his weight. He takes their last distraction, balls it up and tosses it gentler than the rest, and turns his gaze to Lilou’s. She has to stare up to reach his, but she can’t break from it anymore. Her reflection is awash in his eyes. There’s still the warmth behind his smile, but she sees the heat rising in his cheeks, too, and she wants to feel that.

“Hey,” he whispers. His voice nudges closer. “Can I start this time?”

Lilou holds steady. She curls her fingers over the blanket, holds onto the world, and tries not to blink. Not until Nicolas draws toward her. Not until his hand brushes around her nape, caresses between the fibers, strokes her with cool skin—and as her head rests in his hand, she closes her eyes, and she tastes his lips meeting hers again.

It’s not magical—it’s _real_.

And it’s smooth. His lips are moist, teasing. He nuzzles over her mouth and plays against it, breathes slow and heavy past her cheek. Lilou lets him press his lead, lets her mouth curve around his until they’re kissing closer, daring each other for a better taste. There’s the barest spice to his touch, and Lilou wants it. She opens for him, he opens to her, and the taste inside each other is—

They pull away. They look away. Lilou purses her lips, rolls them one over the other, and Nicolas draws his hand back to his mouth. They sit quiet for a moment. Nicolas takes a deep breath before he looks back to her.

“I got an extra toothbrush, if you want.”

Lilou sits on the bathroom counter next to where Nicolas leans as they both swab pasta sauce and tofu out from their cheeks. Nicolas keeps his other hand in his pocket, trying to keep cool, and Lilou just kicks her feet back and forth. They scrub up and down and let the foam build. Nicolas spits first.

“It was good, though.”

He glances back to Lilou in between filling a glass for rinsing. He nods. She looks to him. She nods.

Then they rinse, and he carries her to bed in his arms again.

They’re already staring into each other’s eyes this time. Nicolas sits down with Lilou in his lap. She steadies a paw on his chest and guides herself higher, and his hand slides naturally back up to her jaw. She waits perched for him, and without having to ask, he dips into their embrace again.

Minty. It’s sharp. It is good. Their mouths bob against each other, mutual breaths punctuating the motion, but their lips open sweeter now. Nothing too fast, nothing hard. Just soft. There’s a natural rhythm they play to, easing into each other, giving turns. Nicolas nibbles Lilou’s bottom lip and she quivers aloud—she tugs away, he pulls back, and they watch each other a moment. In the next, she’s the one drawing their nervous lips together again.

This is worth practicing.

Nicolas reaches his fingers all over Lilou’s cheeks. He thumbs over her tufts, entwines himself in her fur, coaxes her breaths faster. He _likes_ it. Lilou clings lower on his shirt, brushes her paws over his chest, presses as close as she can to the heat radiating from his—

“Shit, woah.”

Nicolas jerks away, rubbing a protective hand over his nipple. He mutters with a grin, “Not my thing.”

Lilou frowns at herself as she retracts her paws from him, pulls them to her stomach. Nicolas brings his hand around them anyway. In something like a whisper, like the note before sultry, he says, “What about you?”

Lilou’s frown persists. To the direction of his fingers, one paw accepts his hand over her chest. She sighs deep before any new sensations have the chance to take her, but her paw keeps over his wrist like she can guide him to them.

First it’s his thumb. He brushes apart the fur, glides a soft patch clear for the skin underneath, and rubs as careful as he dares. Lilou clutches her fingers around him, trembles, then contains a tiny grunt. Then Nicolas directs another finger around her. He circles his touch around what’s now erect, nurses it grown, and pinches slow, slow until the grunt escapes into a gasp.

Then Nicolas giggles. It’s not a chuckle. He giggles.

“Kind of thought these would be lower down.”

Lilou scowls through puffy cheeks and shoves his hand away. Nicolas raises both his hands palms-up, surrenders, giggles again through those clear dimples.

“Hey, I’m concentrating. Give me another chance.”

Lilou looks him in the eye again. He’s brighter than ever in them. They’re glowing. So she looks away with a huff, takes him by the wrist, and puts his hand back in place.

“Okay,” he whispers. “I’ll do better.”

Nicolas presses deeper, then releases. He brings her nipple back to attention, rubs it to her highest point, takes ahold, and rolls it sharp and slow between his fingers.

Lilou fidgets in his lap. The growing beat in her lungs and rising blush in her face twists her toes into knots. And when Nicolas joins his other hand to her chest, massages her fully, wraps his warmth around her body and _applies_ it, the knots reach her throat and the only breaths she knows are a single, constant squeak.

So little pressure upon her, so gentle, and yet he’s kindling the pit of her stomach alight. She never realized this was good.

“You like it?”

Lilou nods quickly just to get it out of the way, just to give her panting more space. She lets go of his wrist and presses over his shirt again with both her paws, not searching, but holding herself in one piece however she can. It’s as if pain should be echoing down her spine, but it’s not—all the shivers tell her _No, it’s not_. They tell her _Just keep going_.

Nicolas leans closer above her, and Lilou takes the cue. She takes his kiss again. Their lips cling and moisten and cup to each other, close in for every last nibble and peck before they deepen. Nicolas’s tongue contests her gasps, and Lilou’s surrounders them to him. Then he yanks too hard—she shakes in his grasp, and he eases back. He rubs gentle, tugs firmer for the little shudders, and brings her closer yet.

Lilou pulls away again with a gasp. The breath she takes is hot, sweetened in his. She pushes away his hands and tugs her paws instead to the stretch of his jeans squeezed firmer than the rest. She rubs it and feels it move, feels it squirm within her fingers.

It’s alive in there. It’s stiff. She nearly just wants to… touch it, just touch it for a long time. She did this. God. He’s ready to fuck her.

But Nicolas pulls her fingers away, squirms out of a frown instead. He says, “Not yet. Here—”

He bends his knee up over the bed and makes a path out of his lap. With one hand he strokes Lilou’s hip, but with the other he points to his pillows.

“Lie on your back. I’ma take care of you.”

Paw over her heart, Lilou shifts slowly off from Nicolas. She leans into the sheets on her paws and knees, turns away from him, and gulps down a lump in her throat with the same conscious effort she puts into swaying her butt high and wide as she crawls. She’s wet. She feels it when her thighs brush forward. She just hopes the sexy can be seen over the anxious.

Once she flips over and lays her head over the pillows, Nicolas follows. He presses his knees onto the bed and squeaks it quietly under his full weight now—hands slide all the closer to her toes, but he reaches past them. He—

Lilou waves her paws to stop him.

“ _Bya_!”

She curls her fingers around the hem of her torso and motions them up as if lifting. Nicolas looks down to his shirt.

“Right,” he says. He straightens up a moment and takes hold of his collar, tugging it past his—

Well, no. He tugs it up under his chin and pauses as the slim-fit buttondown slips past nothing.

“I don’t know why I tried that,” he chuckles, fiddling his top buttons open after all. “That isn’t how it actually works. That is not how it ever works.”

Lilou grins, too, almost giggles, but only for the moment anything occurs to her other than how wide apart she’s holding her legs in front of him. She just needs to keep breathing.

Now Nicolas pulls his shirt off. He slides it over his head and his chest comes all at once, skin glowing bright and brown and obscene all together as he hangs almost naked over Lilou. He’s not small. He is not small. She’s spread in front of him and he’s a human monolith over her. His knees over the bed are pressing his jeans taut and the bulge inside them is so ready.

His shirt comes off his arms next and he tosses it aside. His hands make their way back around her toes. He leans in between her legs and steadies his face in front of her pulsing puffy _pppprivates_ , god, she can barely register what he’s smiling at.

“Damn,” he whispers. “It’s a good angle from here.”

Lilou clutches her paws tight over her heart as it beats her lungs alive. Her fingers itch to smooth her skirt down, to make sure she looks appropriate, to hide how embarrassing it is to be this excited, but—bad time. Bad time for it. She knows that. She just—

Oh, she _shivers_. He’s licking her. She barely wants to look, but—it’s his tongue. God, his tongue is pressing her apart. He’s lapping up and down just outside and testing himself inside her in between the swipes. He’s eating her out and he’s taking his _time_.

He gets comfortable around her legs and slides his arms under them, takes a soft grip over her hips like he wants to angle her into him. He gets a taste, and _oh_ , she feels that. Pressing her head back, sighing in between the hisses, Lilou feels the little smells underneath her seeping into her just the same. Without Nicolas’s face against hers, it’s his scent from the bed filling her now. He’s all around her. She takes him in every time she breathes.

And when she looks down, Nicolas is staring back into her eyes. His glow’s reached the ocean inside again, lighting his green up like waves around the black and brown.

“You like it?”

He strokes the fur under her skirt. Lilou curls her toes over his shoulders. She leans a timid paw just in front of him and pats above her vagina.

Nicolas narrows his focus as she pulls away. He pushes closer.

“Gotcha.”

Lilou gasps as he first swipes at her entrance again, then licks farther inside than before. He _contorts_. She’s never heard of anyone whose tongue is so thick inside another person. He wriggles deep before he pulls out again. Then he angles higher over her and slides his tongue—

_NUH_

He licks it firm and slick over her clitoris and Lilou arches through her squeaks. Nicolas cups her between his tongue and his lips, sucks her taut, teases her up and down like he _wants_ her. Every drop on his tongue is liquid static lighting up her spine and she’s not vulnerable she’s _sensitive_ , never this sensitive before, never this wanted and wet and loud.

“ _Nyu, buh—nyah_!”

And he dances to her every syllable. _Electricity_. Lilou never believed it was real like this. She didn’t know. She’s soaked, and he laps it up. He burrows his taste deep again then licks soft, _nibbles_ , grips her tight in his hands and dips her closer into her reach, licks, glides, wraps her up and breathes slow hot breaths tickling down her hair and swells her body higher with every soft breath and given gifted lick so careful and sensitive, god, and _again_.

She wants him _inside_ her already. She barely feels her fingers curling around his hair, wrapping around the firm braids and soft kinks, desperate to pull him close or keep him still or she doesn’t know, just right now she just needs him to keep going please— _please_ — _please_!

And in the moment she would plead, release, scream—all the air in her lungs hitches. She gasps silent. Her throat rasps the quietest moans in a succession outside of her control. The lights in her eyes spin and she holds them in awe, clear, wide open.

She came.

To one last shudder, Nicolas peels off from her. Fingers stroke her gently on his way back up to his knees as he leans her poor trembling toes over the bed again, pulls up, wipes his mouth. Her spitshine glimmers down his wrist.

Lilou’s gaze rolls with him as he eases down into the pillow beside her. Her paw brushes without intention across his chest as he settles in reach, drifting, dreamy. He’s hot.

“You may be in wonder of my natural skill,” Nicolas mutters, grinning easy again, “but I’ve got to be fair. Countless hours of research, _years_ of study have gone into my complete devouring of your pussy just now.”

Flushing overtakes her, but Lilou giggles soft through clutching at him. She should be so embarrassed, right? It’s like his wordless minutes before have taught her some way not to be.

“You know what?”

Nicolas stares into Lilou’s eyes like he’s still touching her.

“You sound really pretty, too.”

Her fingers curl back, but she can’t look away. She tugs her breath quiet.

“ _Nyu_?”

He strokes her cheek.

“Yeah.”

They kiss smaller. Lighter. Slower. Nicolas holds her and Lilou gives back to him. Slow. Warm. They have the time.

(But she tastes kind of bitter? Not sweet. Disappointing.)

Her lips are busy, but her paw stretches lower again, slips over his crotch. The motion of her tongue under his teeth play to what her fingers want most. He’s so hard. She can feel him hot already inside his jeans. She fumbles around the hem, _zzzzips_ him open like a melody to her loins, and feels his drawers press out firm and free over her knuckles. Nicolas doesn’t stop her. She slips underneath the elastic, feels a warm ooze rub down her thumb, and tugs him free.

There it is.

Not the Cock, but Nicolas’s. Dripping, pulsing, ready to plow. Happy to see her. It’s not so utterly pornographic as others she’s seen—it’s better. It’s his.

Their kiss breaks fully as Nicolas hisses in a grunt. Lilou leaves him to that. She finds her energy returned to her as she clambers down the bed, crawls past his dick and instead to his ankles, grabs his pants, and tugs him _naked_. She tosses his jeans and then she finds her place back in front of his _dong_ , motherfucker.

But as only her fingers curl around the tip—hot, wet, oh god _twitching_ —Nicolas says, “Uh, you don’t have to. You… probably shouldn’t. Don’t know how long I’ll last.”

He pulls out of her grip and sits up over the pillows, angling himself comfortable. Thighs twisting, abs flexing. Lilou still pouts mad.

“I never go in one burst, you know?” he says. “I edge myself. I don’t have an accurate track of how long start to finish takes. Might not, uh… might not be high up.”

His cock prods the air no matter his trepidation. He doesn’t even glance at it, but Lilou’s got that covered for them both. Nicolas looks at just her.

“So… still want to go for it?”

He’s a lovely man with stupid fucking questions sometimes.

Lilou edges up past his knees. He spreads his lap flat for her and she nudges her hips warm and mussed into his care, straddles him. His length presses tight against her. That nervous little grin she couldn’t hold back slips away so easily now, shifts to her other lips. It’s good, it’s great, but… it’s real, too.

Is it okay to still be scared after this entire preamble?

No little voice tells her to just do it. It’s quiet in her head. It’s just her and Nicolas here.

“Oh, shit, hang on….”

Nicolas leaves one hand by her side as he leans over to the bedside table and grabs some plastic out from the drawer. Nimble fingers pull a little tear across the package and he slips out its latex, fiddles it down. He mutters, “It’s not new, but it should work. You ain’t got to ask.”

Lilou paws his shoulders as she watches him unfurl the condom. She could object, mewl for how there’s no decent risk posed without it, but—whether or not he knows, he cares that much.

She just smiles slim again. Breathes, breathes….

Even that condom is tight around him.

Nicolas wraps his hands around her waist, rubs soft up and down the fibers. He smiles, too, but his dimples aren’t there for it. It’s an expression in just his eyes.

He whispers, “All yours.”

Lilou breathes. She clings. She steadies her paws and digs her feet against the sheets, lifting, pushing up top—and she hovers. The latex tugs at her drips, but the heat underneath radiates into her. She breathes.

She slides down. She winces even without any pain as she spreads wider, clenches her fingers and grips his skin. She sinks crooked around his tip, opens deeper, slicks down his shaft, and finally—she’s sitting on him.

It’s inside. They’re connected.

It doesn’t hurt, but… it’s filled her. She’s full with him.

It doesn’t hurt, but the realization hits her all at once. Despite all her bluster, her anxiety, her dreams that were just dreams—

They’re having sex. They’ve been having sex. And it’s because Nicolas likes her. It’s not complicated.

She never really knew if someone could feel like that about her.

Nicolas collects his breath, too, and thumbs her cheek. Breathes in, breathes out, takes it in just like she is.

Lilou just takes another breath. She needs it. Then she slides her paws down his chest, clutches him like he holds her, and—and she rides him.

Her toes spread over the sheets and push her back up, knees shaking through the stretch, her whole body balanced haphazard over Nicolas. The near exit of him leaves her suddenly colder. She doesn’t plunge, but lowers herself gingerly back on top and still gasps at the _burning_ in his flesh as it squirms her folds silly.

‘Hot’ means nothing anymore. The right word for his temperature hasn’t been concocted.

Lilou hisses through her next ascent, knuckles creasing around Nicolas’s skin. He squeezes her hips the same, grunting low like he wants to sound tough, but the tip of his every vowel wavy and hazy like he really just doesn’t know what direction to moan. And when Lilou drops tight back around him, squeaks for the both of them, he’s the one to clutch harder into her fur, squeeze the curves hiding underneath.

“Ffffuck…” he breathes. It’s a sound right in her ears, a shaky breath through her tufts, a spinning in her head. “That’s too good….”

Her bits are still sensitive, but she doesn’t want him to quit tugging on her like this. She’s on the edge between too much and not enough. Every dip rubbing her up and down lights her up, begs her wetter. It’s good. He’s pulsing and thudding inside her and he’s _good_.

Lilou gasps clear and open, but she squirms weaker every climb and fall. Her legs are already sapped, and her muscles plead for more time to rest, but all the rest of her just cries for _more more more_. Her tongue rattles incoherent _nyuh_ s and _byah_ s mixed up over the obscene slicking and _plap, plap, plap_ below, but none of it quite offers any strength to her trembling knees.

And Nicolas worried about his stamina….

Lilou gasps, slides to his base, and stays. She slides away her paws and donks her forehead over his chest, hers beating just the same. She lets her swelling and his pulsing work their shivers into her by themselves. She still needs that exercise. Sex is hard.

Nicolas gives her a moment, but rubs his hands taut down her legs. He grips just over her thighs and swallows back his panting. He says, “Can you take a little faster?”

Lilou tilts her neck and squishes her cheek over his chest, bobbing with his lungs. Through the gasps, she nods.

He takes a firm hold of her butt, wraps his palms tight around her flesh, and with that first gasp of _rubbing_ nearly back outside her, that catch in her throat—with that surge of lightning shocking her veins again—she feels the full brunt of ‘a little faster.’

And it is a good brunt.

And she gets _loud_.

Lilou grabs around his chest and holds on, digs in the way he digs her _out_. The sound of their connection melts to wet, hard smacks, Nicolas’s guttural panting and Lilou’s _nuh-! nuh-! nuh-! kyuh-!_ the chorus. It rings in her ears. His minty gasps rolls down her neck harsher on her spine, hotter, mix with his sweat dripping past her snout like a puddle in her brain every breath of them she takes. And he fucks her. And he fucks her. And he pounds her. And she just holds on, and he just keeps going, and the edge between too much and not enough blurs to only _not enough not enough so close take him in finish now so close_.

Nicolas gasps in broken syllables of what he holds back from moaning. He leans into Lilou’s grasp, shoves her straighter even as he lifts and plows, slides a thick sweaty hand up to her shoulders and keeps her firm against him. He engulfs her within his whole body, holds her _close_ over his pumping heart, and with one last mutter right in her ear, slaps her flat back into his crotch.

“Cumming, _cumming_ — _cuh_ —!”

Lilou holds tight, holds her eyes open for the feeling. Nicolas twitches and pulses wide inside her, gasps in _tatters_ down her fur, wrestles his other hand up the small of her back and takes her in his hardest, gentlest hug while he—while he finishes inside her. In the condom, but… inside her. She feels the bumps of every last spurt between their flesh. She hardly blinks.

He came because of her.

She never expected… she never thought there would be a kind of indecent pride, a happiness more warm than moist at the end.

But Nicolas parts them after a moment more of their cuddle, pulls Lilou away from all their sweat beaded together. His fingers brush her nape and she nuzzles back into them, lets him hold her like that. They see each other again. His eyes are a mess, like oil on water, but… every muddy spiral clears as he looks into hers.

It barely feels like a kiss anymore when their lips meet. It’s just the natural order.

And while they sit together, over each other, Nicolas pulls his other hand back in front of Lilou, finds the button on her still expecting more. He offers it. _Probes_ it again, oh, god—Lilou squirms in his grasp, tugs her hips back, but it’s the _right_ way. Nicolas holds her loose enough to get away and yet she finds his jaw to cling to, his tongue to whisper on her teeth that this is all hers. Here it is. Right here. Right _there_. She so very nearly now—

 _Cums_.

A numbing throb echoes dull and sharp at the same time all around her, but it feels like relief. Nicolas peels away in the same breath as hers. The hot skin of his cheek leans gently over the quivering of her tuft. He still holds her in the shivers, lets them both stay like this.

Because if they’re honest, this is never going to happen again. This is the world of pokemon. In this world—get real.

“You good?”

Nicolas strokes the curve above her thigh. Lilou feels the warmth fading slow inside her now, but she just nods.

Nicolas mutters, “I’m not.”

He sighs.

“Man, I don’t want you to be honest with her anymore.”

Nicolas keeps stroking slow and gentle, but Lilou parts from his cheek. She looks him in the eye quieter. She’s not good with guessing when they’ll see each other again. She needs to know.

Nicolas grins weak at her frown. He holds her steady and rolls them both over into a ripple through the sheets, bouncing the pillows behind them. She squeaks at the jolt and he still holds her close, pecks her on the face. Then, in quieter breaths, they just cuddle.

Eventually, it turns dark. The cuddles and kisses fade into whatever else. The little skyline Lilou and Nicolas get through the windows fades to lit panes across the city and stars twinkling smaller.

And the doorbell rings.

“Hey, Nicolas! Thanks again for watching Lilou—well, again today. Was she good?”

Nicolas holds the door open for Vivienne in the same sweater and sweatpants as that morning, but his scent in them is drier now. His sleeves are rolled down again. And Vivienne, of course—

“Oh, there she is! Hey, sweetie! Did you have a good time with Nicolas today? Oh, what’s that you’ve got there?”

—remains as pictured.

Lilou patters without a smile up by Nicolas, computer tablet tucked under her arm. Nicolas glances between her and Vivienne and says, “Yeah, she’s taking that tonight. It’s cool.”

“Well, isn’t that nice of Nicolas?” Vivienne says, leaning down to her knees. “Oh, we can have some girl talk with that if you don’t just want to play games on it. Hold it careful, okay? You don’t want to drop it.”

Lilou bears not with the tone. Her frown persists, but Vivienne is long since oblivious to it. No, Vivienne just pushes back up.

“Thanks for letting her borrow that. Don’t worry, she’ll return it in the morning.”

“It’s cool,” Nicolas says again, hands in his pockets. One comes right back up in a smaller wave than usually accompanies his grin. “See you later.”

Lilou’s already in the stairwell as Vivienne grabs the doorknob behind them. There’s one more glance offered through the crack of full light in the door before Vivienne shuts it.

“Yeah! Have a good night, Nicolas.”

It’s with another jingle a minute later that Vivienne tosses her keys on the counter, stretches high, grunts out the kinks in her back. Lilou doesn’t stop on her way to the sofa for Vivienne’s little rest.

“God, what a long day. _Mmmf_ —yeah. So good to be home. Got a lot done, but god… I just can’t do this every weekend. Not happening.”

Shoes go off and hair comes down before Vivienne trudges forward toes-free, switches the lamp on, then sinks and splays over the sofa back first with the good kind of sigh. It’s one of her few moments of not worrying about appearance while she sags into the cushions, groans small, kind of forgets Lilou’s even there for a second or two of her own me time.

Then she glances over and her voice perks back to a nasally high. “I bet you had a fun day again. You’re lucky we have Nicolas as a neighbor, huh?”

Lilou hardly falters. She’s already laid the tablet between them and there’s no wait in her fingers as she taps out her words.

 _(I) like him_.

Vivienne leans over and twists her head, just smiles the same as she does. She says, “I like him, too. There aren’t many kinds of people like that anymore, right? He’s nice.”

Lilou can’t falter now.

 _I (really) like him_.

But as Vivienne reads and realizes, her smile only turns to the kind of grin with a squeak and a ruffle between Lilou’s ears. “ _Awww_. Well, I can see why you would.”

Lilou frowns. _(Y)ou don’t care?_

“Of course I care, Lilou,” Vivienne says. She leans forward, tucks her hands together over her knees. “It’s really sweet, but—you still shouldn’t get your hopes up.”

Like a mother explaining how the birds and the bees don’t actually fuck. Braviarys and Beedrills. However she’d frame it.

_(S)o if you had a relationship with (N)icolas, it would be fine, but if (I) did, he’s suddenly messed up in the head?_

“That’s not what I’m saying. Nicolas is very sweet. It’s just—”

Vivienne tugs her knees closer, gets into the _serious talk_ position. Raises her hands around each other like she’s trying to wriggle an idea out of physical air, makes that frown like she knows what she’s about to say will _so disappoint_ her poor sweetie.

“—that’s not how people and pokemon work.”

The words come clearer the faster Lilou types. _(I)’m just too stupid for it?_

“Lilou, no, of course that’s not what I’m saying,” Vivienne says. “It just—it just doesn’t work that way.”

_(W)hy?_

Vivienne sucks in her lips, sighs like she knows she can’t say the right thing. “I didn’t decide it. That’s just the world we live in.”

_(B)ecause it grosses you out? (B)ecause (I)’ll always just be your child figure? (W)hy is it so bad if someone likes me back?_

Vivienne leans closer and says not so high now, “Wait. Did Nicolas do something? What did he say to you?”

Without even meaning to, Lilou smirks. It’s a little thing she knows Vivienne can see before she types any further.

_(A)ll he did was not talk to me like (I)’m an idiot while calling me ‘so smart.’_

“Lilou, you _are_ smart.”

There it is. That tone. It’s the first time Vivienne’s ever spoken down to her like a teenager instead of an infant. It’s almost a step up. But then, once again:

“Of course you’re smart. You can read and write; you can use the computer. You’re incredible.”

It’s an old sentiment, but Lilou feels a harsh flushing in her cheeks without embarrassment. Just anger.

_(S)o am (I) your stunted 20 year old kid, or your smart pet?_

“Lilou, you’re my _friend_.”

Vivienne looks her right in the eye. Shoulders hunched because she’s still so much taller, hair messy over one of them, and she still hasn’t noticed to throw it back. She pulls her knee up onto the cushion ahead of her, faces Lilou straight.

“I know the world isn’t fair to you, and you’re not always happy in it, but I try to do my best for you. You want the lock off the refrigerator? We’ll take it off. I trust you. I never should have put it on. It was a stupid idea and—I’m sorry, okay? Sometimes—I just go into autopilot with you like you don’t deserve, I know, but I’m _trying_.”

Lilou could swear there’s a cricket just out the window. Vivienne stomachs a smile again, kind of croaks, “Have you thought about where you want to go tomorrow? Anywhere’s fine.”

Lilou just stares back at her, kind of studies her expression, and hesitates this time. She already knows what to say, but as she looks back to the keyboard, her fingers hover a moment more over it. Then she just says it.

 _(I) like spending time with (N)icolas more than you_.

Then there’s a spark in Vivienne’s eyes that just went out.

 _(H)e doesn’t have to spend the whole day trying_.

The room shrinks. These glowing yellow lights don’t feel warm anymore. Vivienne slumps without moving at all.

“Do you hate me?”

It’s a cracked sound out her throat. Not even Lilou’s other thoughts like that voice.

 _(N)o. (B)ut you’re not all (I) need_ , Lilou says. _(A)nd (I) really like him_.

Vivienne doesn’t cry. She never has. But she mutters barely louder than the hum of the lamp, “What about me? You’re all I’ve got, too.”

She pulls her hands into her lap.

“No one really cares at work, either. They’re too busy. I’m too busy. And no one else ever comes over because they feel like it. They come because I invite them, because… I’m trying. I’m trying, but it’s hard.”

Lilou pulls back, paws at her skirt, brushes the tufts low before her fingers look for the keyboard again. Without any smirk, she says, _(G)et a boyfriend. (T)hat’s what (I)’m trying to do_.

Vivienne looks from the screen to the cushions, hair falling further around her face before she looks back up. “I’m not just saying things, Lilou. I really don’t want you to get hurt. The world isn’t fair, and people don’t...”

She just looks away again.

She is trying.

Lilou taps out slower, _(M)aybe he won’t love me or anything, but (I) should get to know how (N)icolas feels about me. (N)ot the world_.

It’s not even a lie. There’s still plenty of room for things to go south if Lilou gets the chance to find out. She already knows, even though it’s all that’s written over Vivienne’s face.

So Lilou says, _(A)nd (I) want to go to the theater tomorrow_.

Vivienne doesn’t quite smile again, but she reads the screen for longer than she needs.

 _(T)here’s a movie (I) read about (I) really want to see_.

Lilou straightens up, gives Vivienne a moment more to read, then pulls the tablet away from in between them. Vivienne slides her hands up her arms and hugs her elbows, no smile, but no wavering in the pale green of her eyes anymore.

“Okay,” she mutters. “You want to talk more about this later?”

Lilou nods. Vivienne opens her arms back up. They haven’t hugged in… a long time, at least. It hardly makes for a proper peace offering now.

But it’s still a moment.

 

 

Wake up next Saturday morning feeling like oh, Lilou’s already up. Faucet running in the bathroom, teeth foaming under that brush, and what can only be called a hearty good morning wave from her as Vivienne trundles in with a complete personal failing of the same pep.

After some very particular grooming for Lilou this morning, Vivienne’s the one to ring the doorbell one apartment over. Her phone’s in her purse and Lilou’s skirt is still _just_ fluffy enough.

A steady gait echoes closer from inside before Nicolas opens the door to them. Other hand in his pocket, smiling before he even sees who it is. Shall Lilou study his hairstyle again? His shirt, his posture, his eyes—or just glance at his smile and pretend she’s not ready to jump into his arms right now?

“Yo,” he says. “Come on in.”

Vivienne keeps outside even as Lilou patters past the threshold. She shores up her purse over her shoulder, smiles almost as wide as she does, and just says, “You two have fun today, okay? I’ve got some errands to run, so I won’t be home for a while, but—just call me if you need anything.”

“Gotcha,” Nicolas says. “Stay cool out there, Vivi.”

“Right,” she says. And with a glance back to Lilou, a quicker stare at Nicolas, she leans in and mutters, “Don’t do anything weird.”

Nicolas glances down the same, then says, “Oh, we good. I don’t do weird.”

Lilou thus far restrains her very genuine kind of smile while Vivienne’s still at the door. But with one more glance around, Vivienne actually turns and steps away, waving before she’s off, saying, “Okay, bye! Be good, Lilou.”

Lilou catches a warning in her eye this time. At this stage, you see, Vivienne may not totally know yet. Maybe—that is, perhaps not all has still yet been revealed between them.

But it’s a start.

And as Nicolas offers back a wave and clicks the door shut, Lilou starts by waiting so patiently at his knees for him to come down and scoop her up in the intimate style, holding her high to straddle him. No smooching yet. No fondling. Just _looking_.

“I have questions,” Nicolas says, walking them only to the living room. “I came up with some. Firstly, uh—exactly how much cuddling would you be comfortable with before we fuck each other stupid?”

Lilou hums. She leaves one paw braced down his chest, then seesaws the other.

Nicolas nods. “Aight, cool. Secondly—you in for a Pokken rematch?”

Lilou still grins slim, only trying to hold back the natural rest.

“I been practicing one-handed,” Nicolas says. “And my other hand _will_ be making unfair distractions. That’s a promise.”

He leans down slow into his spot on the sofa, then eases Lilou out from his lap to beside him. Lilou settles into her puffy seat nicely, then looks square at Nicolas, smiles just fine, and cracks her knuckles. (Not actually. God, she’s never been able to make that sound with them.)

Nicolas gets the controllers, gets their match prepped. It’ll be a long day—they have the time for playing around. So in every sense, again and again, Lilou comes and gets some.

 

**The End**

**Author's Note:**

> originally posted on Sofurry because i'm that sort of degenerate and whatnot. lilou's still one of the stories i'm happiest with, so i've only fixed some typos and updated some phrasing since then. all criticism welcome, constructive or not! i don't get mad... just disappointed. v^v


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